Open Source CUhttp://opensourcecu.com
Idea sharing for credit unions and their advocatesen-usThu, 30 Jun 2016 19:21:36 +0000Thu, 30 Jun 2016 19:21:36 +0000Things we like: Lendio and their design aesthetic/2016/06/22/lendio/
Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000/2016/06/22/lendio<p>Strip away clutter, eliminate distractions, and focus in on a single next action: the minimalism of the <a href="https://www.lendio.com">Lendio</a> homepage masterfully guides a user down the path to conversion.</p>
<p><img src="/images/lendio.png" alt="Lendio homepage view" /></p>
<p>I think it's their approach to <a href="http://designhooks.com/above-the-fold-and-below-the-fold-myths-and-reality/">the infamous fold</a> I dig so much.</p>
Things we like: Ford Credit Link/2016/03/04/ford-credit-link/
Fri, 04 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000/2016/03/04/ford-credit-link<p><a href="https://fordcreditlink.com">Ford Credit Link</a> is much more than fancy financing. The automaker is tapping into the Sharing Economy with an app that allows up to six co-lessees to “share responsibility among friends, colleagues or family”, sharing the lease cost, reserving the car, and <em>splitting the payment</em> among the group. (Hat tip to <a href="http://www.springwise.com/car-manufacturer-offers-drivers-sharing-app-car-leases/">Springwise</a> for writing about the service, only available in Austin as of now.)</p>
<p>Don't look past these interesting pieces of the program:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><em>They focus on more than collecting payment</em> The app provides tools to manage the asset's use among the group members. A few nifty features include scheduling drive times, keeping tabs on vehicle maintenance, and tracking the car's location. Imagine when the vehicles are self-driving and can come to you (<a href="http://jalopnik.com/you-can-now-autonomously-park-and-summon-the-tesla-mode-1752037395">see Tesla's summons feature</a>)!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>They pitched it to an insurance partner and launched promoting them</em> Although they say insurance can theoretically come from any provider, <a href="https://fordcreditlink.com/#/faq-page">according to the site</a>, “Ford Credit has verified that Liberty Mutual offers insurance for Ford Credit Link subject to underwriting guidelines and criteria.” Ford knew this was a new approach, and didn't assume insurers' existing guidelines would cover the model.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>They cover the payments and responsibility in plain language, leaving the group to make the best decisions.</em> That's got to be the first question anyone considering jumping in with a group of people would be asking, right? The group has the authority to make the decision on how it's split. Also, if a group member <a href="https://fordcreditlink.com/#/faq-page">fails to make a payment on time</a>, "Ford Credit will leave the decision to your group to decide who from your group pays the late fee or if you will be splitting the late fee." (Side note: I'm sure the legalese on the lease agreement is appropriately dense, but that doesn't mean their website language has to be. I like the approach.)</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Consumer trends toward collaborative consumption will shift borrowers away from banks and credit unions and their traditional lending approaches. How many borrowers and how quickly they move is yet to be seen, but Ford and BMW/MINI (see their <a href="http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/">CarSharing program</a>) can't be the only automakers (… or boat manufacturers… or home-builders) thinking about how they fit into the Sharing Economy and how to get there first.</p>
A comedy of errors but no one's laughing/2016/02/29/krebs/
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000/2016/02/29/krebs<p>The title of this post comes from a friend who liked to use that line in retelling the story of a bumbling IT department. It came to mind when reading <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/breached-credit-union-comes-out-of-its-shell/">Brian Krebs' account of Coast Central Credit Union's recent online banking hack</a> and how they didn't take him seriously when he reported it.</p>
<p><em>Treat reports like this with urgency.</em> I get it - your IT departments deal with penetration testing reports, vulnerability scans, audit findings, internal bug reports, emotional complaints and on and on. And sure, there are some false positives that come through but I believe most things that members point out to IT departments as needing attention are <em>legit and should receive a follow up as well as a thanks</em>.</p>
<p>Not taking ten minutes to sit on the phone with anyone (let alone Brian Krebs) who’s telling you that you've been hacked and offering to prove it to you seems, well, downright irresponsible. And this goes beyond the role of management; it's the responsibility of everyone in an organization, especially the ones trusted with fielding the calls and emails.</p>
<p><em>Keep your CMS patched.</em> Krebs says it well: “[Alex] Holden said he’s discovered more than 13,000 sites that are currently infected with Web shells just like the one that hit Coast Central Credit Union, and that the vast majority of them are Joomla and WordPress blogs that get compromised through outdated and insecure third-party plugins for these popular content management systems…. If you run a Web site, please make sure to keep your content management system up to date with the latest patches, and don’t put off patching or disabling outdated third-party plugins.”</p>
<p><em>Encourage your community to find holes and tell you about them.</em> Go as far as a bug bounty program. Why not?</p>
<p>I saw that CU Times covered this too, so I'm sure the story's out there among the credit union managers who follow that publication.</p>
<p>I hope no one's laughing; I'm not and I guarantee no one at Coast Central CU is either.</p>
Things we like: The Amex UX/2016/01/13/amex-ux/
Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000/2016/01/13/amex-ux<p>Here are five features Amex offers that you probably don't:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><em>Amex allows cardholders to update income and asset figures online.</em> They don't make guesses, they just ask. They get more opportunities to raise (and, I suppose, lower) card limits based on ability to repay. And they're straightforward about it with their customers.
<img src="/images/income.png" alt="Amex income update screen" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>Declined charges are available for viewing.</em> Nice security add.
<img src="/images/declines.png" alt="Amex declined charges view" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>Offers can be accepted within their online banking tools.</em> Like this statement credit of $25 for staying in a hotel over $100 sometime before the end of March.
<img src="/images/amexoffer.png" alt="Amex offers view" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>I can upload a receipt photo</em> (the feature's in beta).
<img src="/images/amexreceipts.png" alt="Amex receipt screen" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><em>Then I can get an email weekly with expiring return periods.</em>
<img src="/images/expiringreturns.png" alt="Amex weekly expiring returns email setup" /></p>
</li>
</ol>
The problem with regulation/2015/11/25/what-stops-a-movement/
Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/11/25/what-stops-a-movement<p>Via articles seen on <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/news">Hacker News this morning</a>, it's worth reading both the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/business/dealbook/dream-of-new-kind-of-credit-union-is-burdened-by-bureaucracy.html?_r=0">write-up in the New York Times</a> and
<a href="https://blog.archive.org/2015/11/24/difficult-times-at-our-credit-union/">an admirably transparent post by the Internet Archive Federal Credit Union's Chairman on their challenges.</a> Spoiler alert: It’s like when you had that professor who wouldn't even read your paper because you used Arial 10 instead of Times New Roman 12.</p>
<p>Look, I get it. There's no doubt that it's incredibly difficult to start a credit union in the US -- and even harder for it to succeed. (Hey, it makes it difficult on the entrenched to do business, too.) This isn't a commentary on the fairness of the situation; it sucks.</p>
<p>I want to point out that we shouldn't be surprised.</p>
<p>I agree with <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10627226">a commenter</a>, who wrote in response to Kahle's quote of “I see a system as unhealthy if regulators put 200 to 300 institutions out of business every year for decades on end while only allowing a few to start”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the problem with regulation: it's in the regulators' interest to be as strict as possible, because any failure will be harshly punished (in the press, in the civil service, and in the courts), while success has no reward.</p>
</blockquote>
Want a good look into the future?/2015/11/09/future/
Mon, 09 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/11/09/future<p>Found on the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/fintech/">fintech subreddit</a> today, here’s <a href="http://a16zpatents.theassets.co">a comprehensive analysis of Andreessen Horowitz portfolio, through the lens of patents.</a></p>
<p>Skip CES. Spend a few minutes looking around at companies in the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio, and you’ll get an idea of what’s next. A nifty tool developed by <a href="https://theassets.co/">The Assets</a> showing <a href="http://a16z.com/">a16z</a>-funded companies is described as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What does the future look like? We analysed the portfolio of world-leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to get a glimpse of it. By digging into the technologies it has invested in, and more particularly associated patents, the data visualisation sheds light on fascinating insights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Payments getting faster and more flexible - sure, that’s there (see <a href="https://www.stripe.com">Stripe</a> and <a href="http://www.boku.com/">Boku</a>) … as are solutions for better credit decisioning (see <a href="https://www.affirm.com/">Affirm</a> and <a href="https://www.meetearnest.com">Earnest</a>).</p>
<p>Interesting to look back at the bets made over the last six years that are still winning, and to look forward by examining those they’re making now.</p>
<p>P.S. Rabbit-trailing, I stumbled upon <a href="https://envoy.co/">Envoy</a>. There’s a tool I’d stick at the reception desk. You’ll thank me.</p>
Ratings and Customer Power/2015/11/05/rater-hater/
Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/11/05/rater-hater<p>From a great piece about “how Uber and its peers turned us into horrible bosses” on The Verge called <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625968/rating-system-on-demand-economy-uber-olive-garden">The Rating Game</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So what do we rate for? We rate for the routes drivers take, for price fluctuations beyond their control, for slow traffic, for refusing to speed, for talking too much or too little, for failing to perform large tasks unrealistically quickly, for the food being cold when they delivered it, for telling us that, No, we can’t bring beer in the car and put our friend in the trunk — really, for any reason at all, including subconscious biases about race or gender, a proven problem on many crowdsourced platforms.</p>
<p>This would be a nuisance if feedback were just feedback, but ratings have become the primary metric in automated systems determining employment. If you imagine the things customers rate down for as firing decisions in a traditional workplace, they look capricious and harsh. It’s a strange amount of power for customers to hold, all the more so considering that many don’t know they wield it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here’s the kicker:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We’re not just working for money,” an Uber driver told me. “We’re working for ratings, but ratings have no value. Ratings serve only to prevent you from getting fired. Only bad things can happen to you. We’re scurrying like rats after these things with no value.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s not a direct analog, but it reminded of a car purchase I witnessed recently. (I was not the purchaser - was just the moral support for a friend.) At the end of the transaction, the salesperson said, “You’re going to get a survey in a couple weeks. If you’re not going to give me a perfect score, please don’t take it.”</p>
Capital One, AWS, and Security/2015/10/19/cap-one/
Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/10/19/cap-one<p>Jim O’Neill highlights <a href="http://bankingblog.celent.com/2015/10/16/conference-season-in-vegas/">Capital One’s Bet on Amazon Web Services in a recent Celent Post</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even as a proponent of the long-term impact that cloud services will have on the banking business, I was nothing less than astonished that Capital One has progressed from cloud newbie in 2014 to going “all in” on AWS in 2015.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long to see what Capital One was up to. By leveraging AWS for DevOps and (over time) production, Capital One is on track to reduce the number of data centers it owns and operates from 8 in 2014 to 5 by 2016, to only 3 by 2018. Capital One intends to redeploy the capital it will recoup from data center consolidation into its core businesses while increasing the scope and pace of innovation at the bank.</p>
<p>Capital One is betting that an AWS-based mobile banking platform will allow the bank to support the level of real-time scalability needed to cope with demand spikes such as occurs on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here’s a stellar point (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But what about security? Security is the most commonly cited reason why most banks are not embracing cloud services, so I was interested to hear Capital One’s take on security. According to Rob [Alexander, Capital One’s CIO], “Of course, security is critical for us. The financial services industry attracts some of the worst cybercriminals. So, we work closely with the Amazon team to develop a security model which we believe enables us to operate more securely in the public cloud than we can even in our own data centers.”</p>
<p><strong>More securely in the cloud? Either Capital One has gone rogue (very doubtful) or it knows something that most banks have yet to reconcile: when it comes to security, it’s much less about where your sensitive data sits and much more about how you secure your data from pranksters and thieves.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
Things we like: the Silicon Valley Bank mission for API banking/2015/10/15/twl-svb/
Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/10/15/twl-svb<p>From Dan Kimerling’s letter to customers earlier this week outlining SVB’s <a href="http://www.svb.com/Blogs/Dan_Kimerling/Our_Mission_for_API_Banking/">Mission for API Banking</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With API banking we aim to deliver a set of services that allow our customers to interact with the bank securely, programmatically, at high speed and with little (or no) manual intervention. Whether these are smartphone applications, Saas tools, or next generation e-commerce companies, we want to help automate their banking needs. We also want the developer experience of doing so to be a world-class one.</p>
</blockquote>
Things we like: Clearbanc/2015/10/15/twl-clearbank/
Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/10/15/twl-clearbank<p>How easy are traditional FIs making it for the participants in the (cliché alert) “gig economy” to meet their financial needs, like, I don’t know… avoiding payday lenders for short-term cash crunches? YC Fellow <a href="https://clearbanc.com">Clearbanc</a> may be on to something.
Via <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/banking-startup-clearbanc-launches-with-a-new-instant-pay-tool-for-uber-drivers/">VentureBeat</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To start with, the company is going after Uber drivers with its inaugural product. Using a Visa Debit card, they can deposit their earnings instantly into their account so that they won’t have to wait to spend it on things they need the most. Every Uber driver who signs up with Clearbanc is charged $2 per day that the service deposits funds into their account, after a seven-day free trial period. Drivers are only charged for the days that they work and there’s no contract period.</p>
</blockquote>
Three Takeaways from CUWCS/2015/10/13/cuwcs/
Tue, 13 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/10/13/cuwcs<p>Earlier this month, Matt and I attended the <a href="http://www.cuwatercooler.com/symposium/">CU Water Cooler Symposium</a>. As a former editor and event coordinator once upon a time, I&#8217;m admittedly pro-CUWCS and here are my three biggest takeaways.</p>
<ol><li>Our distant cooperative cousins outside the financial services space have a huge impact on the financial health of our communities (see <a href="http://themerc.coop/your-coop">The Merc Co-Op</a>) and, in some cases, among our members with the most modest of means (see <a href="http://www.happybottoms.org/#/about">Happy Bottoms</a>). Why aren't we all teaming up more often?</li><li>Execute, THEN you may talk (if you choose to). <a href="https://www.ncsecu.org/">SECU</a> has their stuff together, don&#8217;t they? They just choose not to yap about it. I like that.</li><li>Just because it&#8217;s a gathering of credit union idealists doesn&#8217;t mean we aren&#8217;t highly <a href="http://www.gamefi.org/">entrepreneurial</a>, <a href="http://thehabdash.com/">creative</a>, <a href="https://www.mtlehman.com/Personal/">nimble</a> and <a href="https://www.vancity.com/">impactful</a>. Practical, occasionally. Open to different ways of thinking, always.</li></ol>
Upcoming Event: Innovate & Create/2015/09/25/prototyping-event/
Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/09/25/prototyping-event<p>We&#8217;re fired up about an upcoming event where <a href="http://www.trabian.com">Matt and I</a> will join <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene&#8217;s George Hofheimer and Tansley Stearns</a> to lead a group of credit unions in a two-day innovation and prototyping session in Chicago. The event&#8217;s set for December 16 and 17 at Baxter Credit Union&#8217;s headquarters and promises to be well worth the cost. (It&#8217;s free.) </p>
<p>The registration form and full details are over at <a href="https://filene.org/join/event/innovate-create-see-ideas-come-alive-in-two-days">www.filene.org</a>.</p>
Apple just predicted my future/2015/08/21/ios9-predicted-my-future/
Fri, 21 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/08/21/ios9-predicted-my-future<p>We paid our waiter, walked across the parking lot, and got into the rental car. It was 9:42 PM in Girdwood, Alaska. I pressed the home button on my iPhone to get a new playlist going on Spotify for the drive back to the hotel. "51 minutes to E Dimond Blvd. Traffic is normal right now."</p>
<p><img src="/images/legacy/dimond.jpg" style="border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></p>
<p>I hadn&#8217;t used my maps application to get us out of Anchorage for the afternoon.</p>
<p>I hadn&#8217;t asked for driving directions during the day.</p>
<p>I wasn&#8217;t asking for directions now.</p>
<p>THE MESSAGE WAS JUST HANGING OUT ON MY LOCK SCREEN.</p>
<p>Talk about an ambitious feature in iOS 9.</p>
<p>I was so far out of a normal routine that my behavior didn&#8217;t closely fit any of my personal patterns. First, I&#8217;m on my first-ever trip to Alaska. Even at home 3,804 miles away, what I consider my normal routine isn&#8217;t entirely predictable. Some days I work from home, some days I&#8217;m in bed at 8:00... you get the picture.</p>
<p>Second, I&#8217;d stopped at a dozen spots from coffee shops to a wildlife refuge to a ski resort over the nine hours leading up to this. Only after dinner did this message show. Why didn&#8217;t the software predict I wanted to return to Anchorage after I&#8217;d left a coffee shop in Whittier around 5:00?</p>
<p>There&#8217;s so much complexity in doing this right (and no, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s dumb luck), my head is spinning.</p>
<p>How far away are we from truly useful prediction in the digital banking space? And how blurred can the lines get between traditional banking and the holy grail for PFM - to provide more than relevant data and analysis - to give us a lens into our future behavior so that we can <em>manage</em> our finances better. I&#8217;m ready to see:</p>
<p><em>Happy hour ends in five minutes.</em></p>
<p><em>Here&#8217;s a coupon for 15% off an item found in this week&#8217;s local mailer for the store you just entered.</em></p>
<p><em>The road ahead requires tolls, and you may need cash since you&#8217;re an out-of-towner. There&#8217;s an ATM at the next exit.</em></p>
Things we like: Upstart/2015/08/03/character/
Mon, 03 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/08/03/character<p>I once worked in an organization whose CEO repeated in 90% of meetings he attended, “People don’t want auto loans; they want cars.” He also loved making exceptions at the front-line, lending on character over credit score alone.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upstart.com/">Upstart</a> reminds me of that CEO and his mantra in two ways. First, Upstart focuses on what a borrower wants to do with the funds before focusing on the loan itself. Second, Upstart focuses on a borrower’s potential in addition to past.</p>
<p>If you remember from the first day of lending school, <em>Character</em> is first among the “Four C’s of Credit”.</p>
<p>Sadly, consumers have come to believe banks and credit unions only measure said character with a silly three digit number ranging somewhere between 300 and 850.</p>
<p>Kudos to Upstart for taking an approach that acknowledges consumers deserve more than the standard model and relies on data to incorporate potential into the credit decision. Its message stands out distinctly when lined up next to its competitors (psssst… that’s you).</p>
Cutting Bait/2015/07/27/cutting-bait/
Mon, 27 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/07/27/cutting-bait<p>When’s the last time you removed a product from your line-up that hadn’t taken off the way you expected? A product whose relevance had passed?</p>
<p><a href="http://googledesktop.blogspot.com">Google</a> <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/about/">gets</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle">this</a>.</p>
<p>Looks like <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/everything-in-its-right-place.html">big changes in Google+ are coming</a>, too.</p>
<p>What do you do exceptionally well? Focus on doing that better.</p>
Start with the Agile Manifesto/2015/07/15/agile/
Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/07/15/agile<p>There are generally two groups of actors in a software development project: development teams and the client. (It’s rare to see a credit union whose decision-makers are also the coders, so bear with me here.) To do “agile” correctly, both sides need to get on the same page on what that means for the project. The original <a href="http://agilemanifesto.org">Agile Manifesto</a> remains the right place to start.</p>
<blockquote>
<h2 id="manifesto-for-agile-software-development">Manifesto for Agile Software Development</h2>
<p>We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Individuals and interactions</strong> over processes and tools </li>
<li><strong>Working software</strong> over comprehensive documentation </li>
<li><strong>Customer collaboration</strong> over contract negotiation </li>
<li><strong>Responding to change</strong> over following a plan </li>
</ul>
<p>That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. </p>
<p><small>Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Dave Thomas</small></p>
<p><small>Copyright 2001, the above authors - this declaration may be freely copied in any form, but only in its entirety through this notice.</small></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I recently digested <a href="https://moz.com/blog/digital-marketing-from-the-agile-manifesto">a post by Benjamin Estes at digital marketing agency Moz</a> that points out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Notice anything strange? This isn’t about project management. It’s about culture. In fact, “Agile” development teams use many different project management styles—like Scrum or Kanban.</p>
<p>Instead, the manifesto promotes four cultural biases. Being “Agile” means allowing these biases to be major influences in decision making. In everyday life “bias” is often a negative word. It suggests a lack of objectivity. However, being opinionated about the choices you make is the essence of company culture. And it turns out that some cultures are more effective than others.
Changing project management styles isn’t enough. Organizations that try to “be Agile” through changing project management styles, without considering culture, may be dissatisfied with the results.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Admittedly, I’ve never done this before on a project, but why not put this on the table at the first meeting of each software development endeavor?</p>
<p>If development and decision-makers aren’t aligned in either embracing or rejecting the priorities as outlined in the manifesto, both sides may bang their heads against walls as code comes together.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear about one thing. I say we should be on the same page about <em>embracing</em> or <em>rejecting</em> agile on a project.</p>
<p>Also, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/trabianmatt">Matt</a> recently shared with me a <a href="http://m.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/08/erik_meijer_agile_is_a_cancer_we_have_to_eliminate_from_the_industry/">counterpoint article</a>, discussing Agile being trashed by an outspoken developer at a conference in late 2014. It’s a fun read if you get into these things. My favorite snippet (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The talk [bashing Agile] has been debunked by technical architect Nic Ferrier, formerly at ThoughtWorks, a software development company which uses Agile techniques. “It’s not Agile that sucks, and [is] dragging programmers down. <strong>It’s the inability of programmers and business people to understand each other</strong>,” he said.</p>
</blockquote>
When rates finally rise.../2015/07/07/rates/
Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/07/07/rates<p>A profound point from <a href="http://www.gonzobanker.com/2015/07/the-tale-of-the-digital-banks/">Steve Williams</a> today:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When rates finally rise, it could be a whole different ball game. Smart phones will be in more than 75% of all U.S. adult hands, and downloading another digital banking app to grab a better rate on a money market account will be as easy as ordering with Amazon OneClick or playing a new version of Candy Crush. When that time comes, all traditional players may be surprised that their bountiful deposit liquidity is seeping out in an alarming way. Whatever anyone says at industry conferences, this will not be primarily a battle of customer experience; it will be a hard-nosed rate war.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve lost count of the number of economists I’ve heard during ALM meetings, conferences, and planning sessions say annually for about seven straight years now, “Toward the end of this next year, we’ll see rates start to rise.”</p>
<p>Steve’s point – there’s a silver lining for the brick-and-mortars during this unprecedented period: you’re still standing – is similar to another one I’ve heard recently about those pesky regulators: that traditional financial institutions should be thankful for the highly regulated environment that keeps those, ahem, “disruptors” and “fintech startups” away by making it too painful/unattractive/downright impossible to get into the space.</p>
Preparing for Prototyping/2015/06/24/prototyping/
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/06/24/prototyping<p>A client recently asked us what to bring to a prototyping session. I thought you might get value from Matt’s response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The biggest thing you can bring is a deep understanding of the current process. The way I like to think of it is – if someone walked into a branch and talked to your best, most experienced rep, how would that rep help them accomplish their goals (within the domain of this project, of course)? What questions would they ask? What cues would they look for? How would they get things done on behalf of the member? (This includes software tools and processes but also anything manual or requiring coordination among others in the organization.)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If you don’t have much experience handling member requests directly then my recommendation would be to get a crash course and/or find experts who would be able to answer questions as they come up during the session.</p>
</blockquote>
Bank of the West separates Core-Tech from User-Tech/2015/05/29/botw/
Fri, 29 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/05/29/botw<p>Don’t get lost in the title of yesterday’s American Banker article <a href="http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/redesign-at-bank-of-the-west-shows-web-still-vital-in-mobile-age-1074573-1.html">Redesign at Bank of the West Shows Web Still Vital in Mobile Age</a> (subscription required).</p>
<p>Toward the end of the piece, the explanation of the approach taken by Bank of the West is particularly relevant to last week’s post here on <a href="/2015/05/20/how/">Banking Rebundled: How?</a>. The American Banker post explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To facilitate the site makeover, the bank upgraded the Fiserv Corillian software it uses for online banking from version 3.2.5 to 4.2. It also replaced the proprietary middleware software it was using from Fiserv with an enterprise service bus from Software AG and moved to a services-oriented architecture.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The new middleware allows different front end systems to talk to the bank’s core banking platform. “It does enable us to provide better capabilities within online banking, it also lends itself to reusability in other channels such as mobile and ATM,” Yeung said.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The web services used by the online banking system to retrieve customer information and account data, for instance, could be used by the ATM channel, the mobile channel, the contact center or the branches.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In so doing, Bank of the West is part of another trend in which banks are loath to conduct expensive, time-consuming core banking upgrades and yet do want to move toward the idea of an “omnichannel,” offer some services in real time, and be able to introduce new features quickly, all of which call for modern, componentized technology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kudos to <a href="https://www.bankofthewest.com/">Bank of the West</a> for separating their Core-Tech from their User-Tech, and for sharing the strategy as part of that article.</p>
Technology Deep-Dive: The CSS Edition/2015/05/22/developer-update/
Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/05/22/developer-update<p>As Trey mentioned in <a href="/2015/05/19/back/">Dusting off Open Source CU</a>, we want Open Source CU to serve as a platform for discussing technology trends and sharing code in addition to more strategic discussions. We’re passionate about our craft and spend significant time and effort exploring the (near) future of web and mobile development. Over time we’ll present this research within the context of building high-quality member experience and show how these pieces fit together, but we also want to engage those who are building the next generation of banking.</p>
<p>In this post our focus is on some of the changes happening in the world of CSS. Here are some articles we found interesting:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<h3 id="the-end-of-global-csshttpsmediumcomseek-ui-engineeringthe-end-of-global-css-90d2a4a06284-span-classbadge-bluecssspan-span-classbadge-bluereactspan-span-classbadge-bluewebpackspan"><a href="https://medium.com/seek-ui-engineering/the-end-of-global-css-90d2a4a06284">The End of Global CSS</a> <span class="badge-blue">CSS</span> <span class="badge-blue">React</span> <span class="badge-blue">Webpack</span></h3>
<p>Organizing CSS becomes more difficult as the size of the user interface increases, and this seems like an interesting way to reduce the complexity, particularly when combined with <a href="http://facebook.github.io/react/">React</a> (we’ll be talking more about React in the future).</p>
<p>Related links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://medium.com/seek-ui-engineering/block-element-modifying-your-javascript-components-d7f99fcab52b">Block, Element, Modifying Your JavaScript Components</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/markdalgleish/postcss-local-scope">PostCSS Local Scope</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/webpack/css-loader#local-scope">CSS Loader: Local Scope</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<h3 id="solved-by-flexboxhttpphilipwaltongithubiosolved-by-flexbox-span-classbadge-bluecssspan-span-classbadge-blueflexboxspan"><a href="http://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/">Solved by Flexbox</a> <span class="badge-blue">CSS</span> <span class="badge-blue">Flexbox</span></h3>
<p>Layout in CSS is painful but important, particularly to support multiple screen sizes. We’ve used grid systems like those provided by <a href="http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid">Bootstrap</a> and <a href="http://neat.bourbon.io/">Neat</a> (in addition to some custom solutions), but they’re still constrained by the limitations of CSS and require significant amounts of work. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-flexbox/">Flexbox</a> is the solution to this problem and it’s becoming <a href="http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox">more widely available</a> (including its use in <a href="https://facebook.github.io/react-native/">React Native</a>). We’re not able to use it in production yet (thanks, IE), but we’re able to use it in prototypes and look forward to the day when controlling layout via CSS is straightforward.</p>
<p>This site shows how to solve common layout challenges using Flexbox.</p>
<p>Related links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://blog.vjeux.com/2014/javascript/react-css-in-js-nationjs.html">React: CSS in JS</a></li>
<li><a href="http://flexboxin5.com/">Flexbox in 5 minutes</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<h3 id="postcsshttpsgithubcompostcsspostcss-span-classbadge-bluecssspan-span-classbadge-bluebuild-toolsspan"><a href="https://github.com/postcss/postcss">PostCSS</a> <span class="badge-blue">CSS</span> <span class="badge-blue">Build Tools</span></h3>
<p>Layout isn’t the only issue with CSS. It’s not the most elegant of languages and browser vendors often outpace the standards development process (which is a good thing). These rough edges are often handled by preprocesors such as <a href="http://sass-lang.com/">Sass</a>, <a href="https://learnboost.github.io/stylus/">Stylus</a>, and <a href="http://lesscss.org/">Less</a>. PostCSS fills the same need but does so by, as the name implies, post-processing the CSS. The big win here is speed, flexibility, and easier extension via a vibrant plugin ecosystem. I’m particularly interested in it because the processing is done via JavaScript, which means that I can use familiar tools and can include the PostCSS processor without having to use another language stack (my previous favorite, Sass, requires a compiler written in either Ruby or C++).</p>
<p>The most popular PostCSS plugin is <a href="https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer">Autoprefixer</a>, and if you’re going to use newer CSS then it’s a huge time-saver. From the “Solved by Flexbox” site referenced above:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re writing Flexbox code and not using autoprefixer, well, you’re making a horrible mistake.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Last night was the first time I used it, but so far I’m impressed.</p>
<p>Related articles you may find interesting:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://benfrain.com/breaking-up-with-sass-postcss/">Breaking up with Sass: it’s not you, it’s me</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ai.github.io/about-postcss/en/">PostCSS: the Future after Sass and Less</a></li>
<li><a href="http://davidtheclark.com/excited-about-postcss/">I’m Excited About PostCSS (But I’m Scared to Leave Sass)</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>This week we also released a small module for using
<a href="http://raml.org/">RAML-based API specifications</a> in JavaScript projects: <a href="https://github.com/opensourcecu/raml-loader">https://github.com/opensourcecu/raml-loader</a>. We’re using it to build tools for documenting and exploring APIs and will talk more about those tools when they’re ready (you can follow the progress at <a href="https://github.com/opensourcecu/react-raml">https://github.com/opensourcecu/react-raml</a> if you’d like). We’ll also be using those tools to facilitate future API discussions and explorations on Open Source CU.</p>
Banking Rebundled: How?/2015/05/20/how/
Wed, 20 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/05/20/how<p>Ron made a bold claim in <a href="http://www.thefinancialbrand.com/51655/banking-rebundled/">Banking Rebundled</a> over at The Financial Brand.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today’s banks will become the “attractors” of the future – firms that RE-bundle the emerging set of banking services, providing the front-end interface and back-end integration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He leaves a critical question hanging out there:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How is this all going to come together for any one customer?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you have any responsibility for driving tech at your credit union, do this first: Read Bruce Cahan’s Filene paper <a href="https://filene.org/research/report/choosing-relevance-how-credit-unions-can-harness-transparency-and-show-impa">“Choosing Relevance: How Credit Unions Can Harness Transparency and Show Impact”</a>. Despite the title, it’s a technology paper. If you doubt you’ll get anything from it, start with the list of collaborators in the preface. If you’re already thinking TLDR, then just skip to Chapter Four and the discussion on Core-Tech and User-Tech. It’s foundational for what we’re about to break down here.</p>
<p>Credit unions face a daunting challenge.</p>
<p>You know you need to move faster; deep down you know today’s “happy” members are going to turn angry at the ridiculousness of it taking days and days to move money into and out of their own accounts with us when they can tap a button and complete complex transactions with on-demand drivers picking them up based on their location.</p>
<p>You know your members have a right to be impatient about how long it takes a loan from application to funding; it doesn’t help that we can’t give them a simple update on its progress when they can track real-world items moving from warehouses to their front doors.</p>
<p>You’ve heard pundits for years calling for your services to be integrated across your channels (I even had that in my job title once upon a time); yet we still default our processes to tell the member to “call between the hours of 9 and 5 to complete your transaction.”</p>
<p>You know you need your systems to talk to each other and <a href="https://hbr.org/2013/08/move-beyond-enterprise-it-to-a">that many are doing this through enterprise APIs</a>; but when you Visio-diagram-out the systems on your back-end, you wring your hands because vendor A competes against vendor B and there’s no way they’d ever make friendly and have their systems talk to each other.</p>
<p>Yes, you deal with real money. Safety and security are at the foundation of your responsibility to your members, and they should be. And it has become a convenient excuse.</p>
<p>Regrettably, credit unions routinely sacrifice innovation on the altar of caution. It’s time to stop.</p>
<h3 id="so-how">So, how?</h3>
<p>A few days after the question above was posed by Ron, David Gerbino tweeted:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">. <a href="https://twitter.com/TedGoas">@TedGoas</a> The <a href="https://twitter.com/seedbiz">@seedbiz</a> team have effectively used <a href="https://twitter.com/Medium">@Medium</a>. Will public APIs become the norm or will private bank APIs reign? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FinTech?src=hash">#FinTech</a></p>&mdash; David Gerbino (@dmgerbino) <a href="https://twitter.com/dmgerbino/status/594210681320296449">May 1, 2015</a></blockquote>
<p>Matt’s response, in a series of tweets:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/dmgerbino">@dmgerbino</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TedGoas">@TedGoas</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/seedbiz">@seedbiz</a> they&#39;ll be public, though not necessarily documented for public consumption. Public API powers frontend.</p>&mdash; Matt Dean (@trabianmatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/trabianmatt/status/594226338149576704">May 1, 2015</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/dmgerbino">@dmgerbino</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TedGoas">@tedgoas</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/seedbiz">@seedbiz</a> As do I. Vendors can expose private APIs, but banks should use those to create their own public APIs.</p>&mdash; Matt Dean (@trabianmatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/trabianmatt/status/594228389432680449">May 1, 2015</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/dmgerbino">@dmgerbino</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TedGoas">@tedgoas</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/seedbiz">@seedbiz</a> All user/member interfaces then use that public API. No direct connection, even for web-based online banking.</p>&mdash; Matt Dean (@trabianmatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/trabianmatt/status/594228716106035200">May 1, 2015</a></blockquote>
<p>Back to Ron’s question: how do you do it?</p>
<p>Get started on that enterprise API so that you can separate your Core-Tech from your User-Tech. Trust those vendors on the Core-Tech side to do what they do best: automating loan decisions, sending out bill payments on your behalf, keeping the “paper” documents in compliance, acting as your ledger, and on and on. But for Pete Drucker’s sake, realize that your user-tech - the interfaces on an ever-changing variety of devices - must be now held to a bar that <a href="http://www.amazon.com">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.uber.com">Uber</a>, <a href="http://www.pinterest.com">Pinterest</a>, and <a href="http://www.mx.com">MX</a> set and continue to raise higher and higher.</p>
<p>These thoughts come from a lot of conversations between Matt, me, and some big bright minds in the space. Matt’s built it from the vendor side, I’ve led a team doing it from the FI side, and many of you have already gone down the road as well. You call it an ESB, a middleware layer, an enterprise API, etc…. Build that thing out and expose it.</p>
<p>What should the FI should be responsible for? The FI should own integrating the systems and providing “raw” data.</p>
<p>What should the group responsible for the interface (mobile apps, online banking, loan apps, membership apps, etc.) be responsible for? That UX team should own building the member experience on top of that data.</p>
<p>When going this route, strive for an enterprise API that captures every manner in which your members interact with your credit union.</p>
<p>And to be clear, the APIs provided by your core and other technology partners are crucial and should serve as key components in your own enterprise API. <em><strong>Indeed, the quality of a vendor’s API should be a key metric by which that vendor is evaluated.</strong></em> However, if you want to be able to respond to the specific needs of your members – if you want to be able to say “yes” when you want to get an idea to market that your tech vendors aren’t yet on board with – then your enterprise API must be your own, and it must be the primary interface to your credit union.</p>
Dusting off Open Source CU/2015/05/19/back/
Tue, 19 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000/2015/05/19/back<p>In 2008, it was time to press pause on Open Source CU. We started the site in 2005 as a side-project; a place where Matt, Brent and I could say what we wanted to say about the credit union movement.</p>
<p>With our medium being a blog and with blogs being so novel, we became known as bloggers first. To many, we were a development shop second.</p>
<p>In 2008 as social media made its way into the mainstream, we reconsidered our use of it and the site was mothballed. Trabian grew into new lines of business, I eventually grew into leading IT and marketing at a credit union I’d long respected, and that was that.</p>
<p>Until it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, after four years in San Francisco, it was time for me to make a change. (I relished the time and feel like I was pretty good at what I did, but I am personally happier in jeans and a t-shirt than in ALM meetings and exam interviews.)</p>
<p>In April I rejoined Trabian. Matt and I began thinking about the best way to tell our story. We’ve seen a lot of successes and learned a lot of lessons (him on the vendor side, me on the credit union side) and there’s much to share. Rebuilding Open Source CU was the clear answer.</p>
<p>Open Source CU was and will be a community focused around idea-sharing. It’s a place where we’ll point to what we like, offer suggestions to improve what should be improved, share code, discuss technology trends, dissect industry rumblings, and make plenty of predictions that will prove us to be mostly delusional but occasionally prescient.</p>
<p>Call us out and keep us humble. We want to make credit unions better. If you do, too, let’s do this.</p>
How to have your cake and eat it too/2007/05/01/how-to-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too/
Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/05/01/how-to-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too<p>Credit unions have the benefit of being a part of a close-knit powerful network -- the credit union industry as a whole -- while being tightly woven into the communities they serve at the same time. This opens up huge opportunities for competing with banks and other financial institutions at every single level.</p>
<h1><span class="caps">COMPETING BIG</span></h1>
<p>Why do people choose large banks like Wells Fargo, Chase, and B of A? I&#8217;d argue that a large part of that is accessibility. They want access to the same services, branches, and ATMs across the country. When I moved to from Houston to College Station for school, I moved my money from <a href="http://www.eccu.net">Energy Capital Credit Union</a> to Wells Fargo. I knew that college would be a mobile time &#8211; I&#8217;d be visiting family at home, friends at other schools, going on trips in the summer, etc. I knew I&#8217;d be able to access Wells Fargo pretty much anywhere I went.</p>
<p>I had absolutely no clue about the <a href="http://www.cuswirl.com/">Shared Service Centers</a>, the <a href="http://www.co-opfs.org/">Co-op Network</a>, and the depth of service they offered. Credit unions, although appearing more disjointed and less accessible, are actually kicking banks&#8217; collective tail when it comes to <acronym title="Point of Sale">POS</acronym> access. Chase <a href="http://www.chase.com/ccpmweb/shared/image/Locator-Ad.gif">markets the heck out of the 8,500 ATMs nationwide</a>. The credit union co-op network has 25,000.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I needed to grab a cashier&#8217;s check from my <a href="http://www.forumcu.com"><span class="caps">FORUM</span></a> account. I was at a Starbucks. I literally looked out the window, saw a <a href="https://www.ghcu.org/"><span class="caps">GHCU</span> branch</a>, and they were on the network. My credit union (and office), is in Indianapolis, I live in Dallas, I&#8217;m in Seattle right now. I couldn&#8217;t do this if it weren&#8217;t for the network credit unions have created.</p>
<p>Credit unions can compete on geographic convenience. They can compete big where big matters. Right now, communication of this is effectively nil. You folks should be shouting it from the rooftops.</p>
<p>This message is where large-scale cooperative advertising can really make a difference.</p>
<h2>competing small</h2>
<p>Credit unions have the benefit of deeply understanding, at the executive level, the community they are serving. This could mean the <span class="caps">SEG</span> or local area. Either way, because individual credit unions are relatively small, this gives them agility to react quickly to the needs of their community.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.lespeoples.org">Lower East Side People&#8217;s <span class="caps">FCU</span></a> (disclosure: they&#8217;re a client of ours) has several products that no big bank could have, or would have, pulled off. This includes <a href="http://lespeoples.org/home/personal/programs/hdfc">low-income, cooperative housing loans</a> and a <a href="http://lespeoples.org/home/about/news/11">matched education savings account</a> (LES matches savings dollar-for-dollar). <span class="caps">LES</span> People&#8217;s <span class="caps">FCU</span> was created when all of the banks gave up and left the Lower East Side of New York. They <em>are</em> the community, and you can tell.</p>
<p>Vancity&#8217;s <a href="http://www.changeeverything.ca/">ChangeEverything</a> is, as always, a great example. Let&#8217;s change <strong>our</strong> community, <strong>our</strong> city. It&#8217;s ours, not theirs. Not one single big bank can ever say &#8220;We are Vancouver! Let&#8217;s fix it, because it belongs to all of us!&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://dougtrue.net/articles/2007/04/23/from-the-tv-ad-to-the-billboard"><span class="caps">FORUM</span>&#8217;s <span class="caps">CGM</span> campaign</a> is an example. Yes, a large bank can say &#8220;upload a video of your story and why you love us to YouTube, and we&#8217;ll make an ad out of it!&#8221; But there is something completely different about <span class="caps">FORUM</span>&#8217;s campaign &#8211; a mass of members lined up at their actual headquarters, some are passionate about <span class="caps">FORUM</span>, some just want to be on TV, but all of them are spending the day together, with <span class="caps">FORUM</span>, because <span class="caps">FORUM</span> brought them together to be a part of the message.</p>
<p><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com">Seth Godin</a> spells it out like this (from &#8220;<a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/06/small_is_the_ne.html">Small is the New Big</a>&#8220;):</p>
<blockquote><p>Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.</p><p>Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.</p><p>Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.</p><p>Small means that you can answer email from your customers.</p></blockquote>
<h2>Best of both worlds</h2>
<p>Through a combination of their cooperative network and individual agility, credit unions can both compete huge and compete small in a way that no other financial institution can. It&#8217;s just a matter of rallying together and understanding what about huge and small will make them outstanding.</p>
<p>(Tip-of-the-hat to Ross Graham from <a href="https://www.elfcu.org">Eli Lilly <span class="caps">FCU</span></a> for the good conversation about this topic over the past couple of days.)</p>
JetBlue vs Bank of America/2007/04/30/jetblue-vs-bank-of-america/
Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/04/30/jetblue-vs-bank-of-america<p>From Bank of America&#8217;s Customer Experience Executive after being ranked #2 in <a href="http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/BankOfAmericaCustomerService.aspx"><span class="caps">MSN</span> Money&#8217;s Customer Service Hall of Shame</a> -</p>
<blockquote><p>First I want to thank everybody who participated in this survey. We are listening. And as the Customer Experience Executive for Bank of America, I can assure we are acting on your feedback.</p><p>We realize that we are in a new era where the customer rules. Expectations have never been higher. Our customers tell us three things are really important to them. They want to be treated well. They want great value from the products and services we offer. And they want to make sure that we get it right on every transaction, every time.</p><p>We may not always meet your expectations, but we are always trying.</p><p>That&#8217;s our commitment to you.</p></blockquote>
<p>Contrast that with:</p>
<center><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-r_PIg7EAUw" />&lt;/param&gt;<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />&lt;/param&gt;<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-r_PIg7EAUw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" />&lt;/embed&gt;</object></center>
<p>Both show corporate responses to negative press coverage. BofA sounds like blah-blah-blah; JetBlue&#8217;s resonates.</p>
<p><small>(Thanks for the link, Lena!)</small></p>
Instead of being the mouth, be the mouthpiece./2007/04/27/instead-of-being-the-mouth-be-the-mouthpiece/
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/04/27/instead-of-being-the-mouth-be-the-mouthpiece<p>Idea from <span class="caps">CUES</span> Nexus session:</p>
<ol>
<li>Go to local high school business class.</li>
<li>Donate a couple hundred bucks for audio equipment/webcam. </li>
<li>Ask <em>them</em> to produce vlog or podcast.</li>
<li>Simply sponsor the show and provide feedback when they have questions.</li>
</ol>
<p>If you want to get into social media as a credit union, you <em>don&#8217;t</em> have to produce the content in-house. See <a href="http://dougtrue.net/articles/2007/04/23/from-the-tv-ad-to-the-billboard"><span class="caps">FORUM</span>&#8217;s User Generated Content (UGC) campaign</a> or Vancity&#8217;s sponsorship of <a href="http://changeeverything.ca">Change Everything</a> for what&#8217;s working from two of my favorite CUs.</p>
<p><small>Full Disclosure: Of course I love <span class="caps">FORUM</span>. We sorta live in the same building. :)</small></p>
Are you on Yelp?/2007/04/16/are-you-on-yelp/
Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/04/16/are-you-on-yelp<p>As far as social networks go, <a href="http://www.yelp.com">Yelp</a> hasn&#8217;t seen the attention of MySpace, Second Life, or now Twitter &#8211; but its impact on your reputation can be profound. Before I explain what Yelp is (don&#8217;t worry if you haven&#8217;t heard of it), I&#8217;ll illustrate the point.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a Google Maps search for <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&#38;hl=en&#38;q=credit+union+94118&#38;layer=&#38;ie=UTF8&#38;z=13&#38;om=1">credit union 94118</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&#38;hl=en&#38;q=credit+union+94118&#38;layer=&#38;ie=UTF8&#38;z=13&#38;om=1"><img src="/images/legacy/fivestars.gif" style="border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a></p>
<p>Notice the five stars? When you expand the map detail, you&#8217;ll see:</p>
<p><img src="/images/legacy/gmapdetail.gif" style="border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t need to explain how important a little company called Google is to your business. As seen above, many Google reviews originate from Yelp, a social network where users review businesses <em>a la</em> Amazon&#8217;s or eBay&#8217;s rating systems.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s take the same search we made on Google Maps (for <a href="http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=credit+union&#38;find_loc=San+Francisco%2C+CA+94118&#38;action_search.x=28&#38;action_search.y=15&#38;action_search=Search">&#8220;credit union 94118&#8221;</a>) and perform it in Yelp.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=credit+union&#38;find_loc=San+Francisco%2C+CA+94118&#38;action_search.x=28&#38;action_search.y=15&#38;action_search=Search"><img src="/images/legacy/yelpsearch-1.gif" style="border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a></p>
<p>Clicking through to <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/ZTbs7a8O2ACAFnG81HCXVg">SF Fire Credit Union&#8217;s detail page</a> (the number two result in the search), <a href="http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=muPKUHFQnK5_G55k48Avkw">Brandon B.</a>, writer of 102 reviews to date, says (dollar signs added by me):</p>
<blockquote><p><span class="caps">I JUST</span> opened an account with the <span class="caps">SFFCU</span> last week, and while I haven&#8217;t had much experience banking with them, I will say that they were the winners at the end of an exhaustive search to replace Washington Mutual (I will not refer to them as &#8216;WaMu&#8217; and no, its not cute) as my financial institution.</p><p>I found out that there are few banks out there that offer both great, affordable banking products <span class="caps">AND</span> stellar service. For me, it came down to two, and the personal, local touch of the <span class="caps">SFFCU</span> combined with a completely <span class="caps">FREE</span> checking account (no hidden fees or minimum balances) finalized my decision.</p><p>The other big upside &#8211; especially for those of us who are out and about and never have enough cash &#8211; is that you can use an <span class="caps">ATM</span> in the world and not only will they not charge you, they will refund you the fee the <span class="caps">ATM</span> charges. Hello? Is that not amazing?</p><p>You are greeted at the entrance of main branch, not only by a big a$$ bowl of candy, but what I thought was a receptionist was actually the branch manager. You really get the sense that you are part of the place and they treat you truly as a &#8216;member&#8217; and not just a &#8216;customer&#8217;.</p></blockquote>
<p>If someone said that about me, I&#8217;d print it out, frame it, and read it each morning as a self-motivation ritual.</p>
<h3>Joining the conversation</h3>
<p>How can your business participate in the conversation? (I use that &#8220;join the conversation&#8221; phrase a lot, don&#8217;t I?)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yelp.com/business">Yelp&#8217;s Business Section</a> contains sage advice:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>First the <span class="caps">DON</span>&#8217;Ts:</strong></p><p>1. <em><span class="caps">DON</span>&#8217;T review your own business anonymously or get your friends to do the same.</em> (see below for alternatives)</p><p>2. <em><span class="caps">DON</span>&#8217;T overestimate the impact of a single negative review.</em> It happens to even the best businesses. In fact, in speaking to Yelp users, we&#8217;ve learned that negative reviews sprinkled in with favorable reviews often act to enhance the credibility of the positive reviews by illustrating the honesty and openness of the Yelp environment. That said, if you see a trend of negative reviews, you may want to take this feedback and determine if there is a way to improve your business.</p><p>3. <em><span class="caps">DON</span>&#8217;T lash out at the people who have written negative reviews about you.</em> Tempting as that may be, we see that backfiring in some cases as the Yelp community may up the ante and even engage in &#8220;vigilante justice&#8221; by spreading more negativity (see below for alternative).</p><p><strong>Now the DOs:</strong><p>1. <em>DO register on Yelp yourself, as an individual, and engage with the community (write some reviews, upload a picture, etc.).</em> As a business owner or manager, you are a real human being, and Yelp is the right place to show that.</p><p>2. <em>DO add photos to your business page and make sure your business information is correct.</em> Click on the &#8216;Update Business Info&#8217; link if you want to make changes, and be sure to note that you are the business owner when submitting the info.</p><p>3. <em>DO review your own business</em> &#8211; clearly stating that you are the business owner.&lt;/em&gt; Full disclosure is important here, and will be critical in earning the respect of the Yelp community.</p><p>4. <em>DO use Yelp private messaging to thank reviewers for writing about your business &#8211; but consider waiting 48 hours before responding to any negative reviews as a cooling-off mechanism.</em> Be sure to put yourself in the mindset of your customer, and recognize that your tone may come across as defensive, so tread lightly.</p><p>5. <em>DO take the feedback to heart&#8230; but remember that each review is just one single opinion, and it&#8217;s the entire set of the Yelp reviews together that really matters most.</em></p>&lt;/blockquote&gt;
<h3>What sparked this discourse, Trey?</h3>
<p>I&#8217;m making this post partly because I fear that a lot of credit unions are about to jump into social media with a &#8220;let&#8217;s throw a blog at it&#8221; mentality. &#8220;It&#8221; being (a) the problem of dwindling returns and rising costs for traditional marketing and (b) a desire to sit at the cool kids&#8217; table.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d argue that Yelp is a social network in which businesses truly belong. Before you build a MySpace page (see <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2007/04/06/dan-mica-blogging-and-vlogging#comment-1533">the comment thread here</a> for my thoughts on the disadvantages of credit unions using MySpace and one credit union&#8217;s dilemma in particular), before you talk your <span class="caps">CEO</span> into vlogging, and before you set up an office in Second Life (yes, Trabian has one that we rarely visit), get your feet wet in social media first.</p>
<p>Yelp is a good place to start, and the tips above double as a guide for participating in conversations about your business <em>elsewhere on the social web, particularly in blog comments</em>.</p>
</p></blockquote>
Most CUs don't grasp social media; Gene at Tinfoiling does./2007/03/30/most-cus-still-dont-understand-social-media-gene-at-tinfoiling-does/
Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/03/30/most-cus-still-dont-understand-social-media-gene-at-tinfoiling-does<p>A comment thread on another blog has made me realize that most credit unions don&#8217;t get social media. By now they&#8217;ve all at least heard of &#8220;blogs,&#8221; but few understand that social media can make business sense. I&#8217;ll get to the comment thread in question later in this post, but first I want to start with a story about one credit union exec who does see the value in social media. <a href="http://tinfoiling.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/the-poster-arrived/">His CU was even a sponsor of Northern Voice 2007</a>!</p>
<p>Gene Blishen writes the <a href="http://tinfoiling.wordpress.com">Tinfoiling blog</a>. He&#8217;s the general manager of <a href="www.mtlehman.com">Mount Lehman Credit Union</a>, which he describes as &#8220;a small credit union just outside of Vancouver B.C. We live among the giants (Vancity, Coast Capital, Envision, Prospera). We are small but nimble and have a purposeful strategy – Serve the member.&#8221; (BTW, I <em>love</em> their brand.)</p>
<p>On <a href="http://tinfoiling.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/in-your-face/">a recent post</a>, he writes (emphasis and formatting added):</p>
<blockquote><p>Someone once told me that small credit unions are a conscience for larger credit unions. We have this symbiotic relationship. As organizations grow larger it is apparent that their social conscience diminishes, not out of choice but because their size creates difficulties if not impossibilities on trying to maintain a focused and understood social conscience. That coupled with the new realization that marketing/PR is not appreciated when it is shoved in your face without any regard to who you are or what you think.</p><p>It&#8217;s like most advertising is in &#8216;black and white&#8217;, absolute, with the agenda to <span class="caps">BUY</span>. We have changed. <strong>Blogs and the internet have begun a very different dialogue between the buyer and the seller &#8211; there should be an eBay rating for all companies.</strong></p><p>This difference produces marketing/PR that is in colour with every hue available. You have to now prove what you state and you don&#8217;t get a second chance. You could call it coloured no chance marketing. <strong>Because if you are wrong, or if an employee takes a stance that is at odds with what you are trying to idealize and that party that you offended understands blogging then watch out. From their small network someone has started pulling the thread and everything your business has done begins to unravel.</strong></p><p>Does it mean much? Absolutely.</p><p><strong>It is the lethal injection to the word of mouth buzz that is critical. It is permanent. What is posted on the internet is like something written on stone tablets. Pretty tough to erase and there for the world to see for a long time.</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>Brilliant. I wish the anonymous <del>cowards</del> commenters on <a href="http://www.creditunions.com/home/articles/template.asp?article_id=2263">this creditunions.com thread</a> would see Gene&#8217;s post.</p>
<p>Note: I avoided getting involved in that conversation until someone tried to rip Verity for (a) blogging and (b) hiring Trabian. If you want to see what my writing looks like when I&#8217;m irate (and it takes a lot), comments # 17, 18, and 19 give a glimpse.</p>
<p>For the record, this isn&#8217;t at all against Callahan &#38; Associates, it&#8217;s against the anonymous commenters. I love how Callahan is embracing social media with Scott&#8217;s work on his two blogs and I applaud yesterday&#8217;s launch of the <a href="http://blog.creditunions.com/CUSP"><span class="caps">CUSP</span> blog</a>. They understand social media.</p>
<p>But most financial institutions still don&#8217;t. Thank goodness for the ones who do, for the folks in that thread on the pro-social media side &#8211; the ones who are leading the charge.</p>
<p>P.S. I&#8217;m considering a move to Canada. Ok, just kidding &#8211; our <a href="http://www.forumcu.com">landlord</a> absolutely gets social media &#8211; but I do need to go visit <a href="http://vancity.com">Vancity</a>, <a href="http://www.socialsignal.com">Social Signal</a>, <a href="http://www.currencymarketing.ca">Currency Marketing</a>, <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/author/gene-creelman">Gene C.</a>, <a href="http://tinfoiling.wordpress.com">Gene B.</a>, <a href="http://www.darrenbarefoot.com">Darren</a>, and <a href="http://thebankwatch.com">Colin</a> all on an extended road trip up north.</p>
Two more: Filene interview, Vancity update/2007/03/28/two-more-filene-interview-vancity-update/
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/03/28/two-more-filene-interview-vancity-update<h3>Thing 1. Maxed Out writer/director/producer on credit unions</h3>
<p>On the <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene</a> site, George just posted a <a href="http://filene.org/blog/post/maxedout">rockin interview</a> with <a href="http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/">Maxed Out</a> writer, director, and producer James Scurlock. James starts,</p>
<blockquote><p>As I&#8217;ve traveled the country with Maxed Out, one of the most common questions I hear is, Is a credit union a better choice than a traditional bank?</p><p>As a writer, I&#8217;m not qualified to give financial advice, but I always have to agree that, in theory, a credit union offers a lot of advantages.</p><p>.... If this industry can do a better job of telling Americans what a credit union is and why it&#8217;s different from their bank, my guess is that millions will happily make the switch.</p></blockquote>
<p>I really want to see the movie, and George recommends the book. Anyone seen or read either yet?</p>
<h3>Thing 2. I don&#8217;t want this comment to get lost in the mix!</h3>
<p>Take a look at William&#8217;s brilliant response in the comment thread of our recent Vancity post (emphasis added):</p>
<blockquote><p>I must say that as an employee of the recipient of Darren&#8217;s criticism, I also believe he has every right to use his blog as a forum for his opinion. We live in a consumer culture and retail experiences are a huge source of excitement and frustration. It&#8217;s been a wake up call for us, one we wish hadn&#8217;t happened for the reasons it did.</p><p>In the end, for me, it&#8217;s not a discussion of whether Darren should use his blog for the purposes he does, that seems self-evident. The thing for me is that he does and we either get on board or get left behind. I only wish we&#8217;d publicly joined the conversation the other times he blogged about us instead of letting everyone else shape a conversation about us without our input.</p><p>All you have to do is Google &#8216;Vancity customer service&#8217; to see the power of the medium. One blogger can influence a lot of people, and to me blogs represent third party unsolicited criticism or detractions. For community and business reasons, we&#8217;d prefer the former.</p><p>Thanks all for the great discussion. Wm</p></blockquote>
Vancity proves (again) they get social media/2007/03/26/vancity-proves-again-they-get-social-media/
Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/03/26/vancity-proves-again-they-get-social-media<p>Darren Barefoot, a well-known Canadian blogger who&#8217;s even dropped <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/08/13/blogger-lashes-out-against-credit-union#comment-411">a few comments on Open Source CU</a>, hooked Vancity up with some constructive criticism on <a href="http://www.darrenbarefoot.com">darrenbarefoot.com</a>.</p>
<p>In case you&#8217;re wondering how things got started, Darren&#8217;s post is called <a href="http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2007/03/i-wanted-to-like-vancity-but-now-i-loathe-them.html">I Wanted to Like Vancity, But Now I Loathe Them</a>.</p>
<p>Darren writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>You know, <a href="http://www.vancity.com/">Vancity</a> does a lot of great things. <a href="http://www.changeeverything.ca/">ChangeEverything</a> is cool, as is <a href="http://climatechangemortgage.com/">their new climate change mortgage</a>, and they have a ton of admirable local initiatives.</p><p>It was because of that good reputation, both as a bank and a community member, that we switched our business accounts from the Royal Bank to Vancity last year. The Royal Bank had given us incompetent, impersonal service, so it was a pleasure to take our money elsewhere (they likewise continue to treat us poorly for our personal accounts).</p><p>You know what? Vancity is no better. They&#8217;re possibly even worse.</p><p>I already described <a href="http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2006/08/vancity-why-do-you-spite-me-so.html">the serious error</a> they made last August, as well as <a href="http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2006/11/vancity-doesnt-want-my-business-again.html">their confusing mail piece</a> (a trivial complaint, but reflective of their customer service).</p><p>Since then, Vancity has made two more mistakes on basic activities within our account. I&#8217;m not manufacturing imaginary missteps. I have emails from my account manager admitting they made errors in issuing incorrect cheques and cashing cheques from the wrong account.</p><p>I don&#8217;t care how frickin&#8217; green or community-oriented this credit union is. I don&#8217;t pay banking fees for ineptitude.</p><p>I&#8217;m out of patience and goodwill. That&#8217;s three errors in six months, in our first year with a new bank. If we performed like this at Capulet, all of our clients would fire us.</p><p>If I wasn&#8217;t leaving the country in four weeks, I&#8217;d put the immediate boot to Vancity. Instead, I&#8217;ll leave that onerous task for our return.</p><p>On a related matter, why aren&#8217;t these community-minded people monitoring the Web? This is my third post dissing their organization, and nobody from Vancity has responded, publicly or privately.</p></blockquote>
<p>Yikes! Then the comments start:</p>
<ul>
<li>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been wanting to assuage my bleeding-heart side for a while and switch from TD Canada Trust to Vancity — but reading about your experiences has caused me to stay put for now.&#8221; </li>
<li>&#8220;As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I&#8217;ve never had any such problems with Vancity in our long years of dealing with them, so I have to wonder if your problems are specific to your branch&#8221; </li>
<li>&#8220;Thanks, you saved me a bit of trouble. I&#8217;ve been looking at banks to open a business account and Vancity was high on my list to check out.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
<p>Ahh, but here&#8217;s what Vancity did that <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/08/13/blogger-lashes-out-against-credit-union">Vystar didn&#8217;t</a>.</p>
<p>Vancity responded.</p>
<p>From Sara Holland, Vancity Public Affairs and Corporate Communications:</p>
<blockquote><p>Blogging is a real challenge for us folks over here in Banking World. On the one hand it&#8217;s really helpful to hear directly from our customers about their service challenges (and about their positive experiences — thanks for the testimonial, Derek!). On the other hand we&#8217;re really limited in how much we can respond to any specific experience in a public space like a blog, because government regulations and our own policies impose very strict limits on what we can say about anybody&#8217;s financial relationship with Vancity.</p><p>All for good reason, but it makes blogging about an issue like this one (which in some ways we&#8217;d love to do!) very tough. It&#8217;s the tension between the transparency and authenticity that lie at the heart of blogging, and the critical need to offer the level of privacy protection that members expect and deserve. Please bear with us; we&#8217;re still trying to figure out how to interact with our members in the blogging world. And that&#8217;s meant it&#8217;s taken us longer than it should have to figure out how to respond to comments like yours.</p><p>That said&#8230; we do want you (and other BC bloggers) to know that <span class="caps">YES</span> we are watching and listening. We&#8217;re big fans of Technorati and when Vancity pops up on someone&#8217;s blog, that blog post makes its way through to our internal communications team. But our policy is to respond behind-the-scenes, for example by asking the Branch Manager to follow up.</p><p>We take service issues very seriously. I know your Branch Manager dealt directly with you regarding the original service issue. The bottom line is we&#8217;ve made mistakes with your account and that&#8217;s not okay. And we really appreciate that our community values and investments have given you a reason to be patient while we worked on your concerns. We&#8217;re determined to improve our service to you and make you love us. We will be in touch.</p></blockquote>
<p>So I asked Darren what the response meant. He wrote back,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To me, the most interesting thing was that they had read my previous complaints about their organization, but had failed to recognize that they&#8217;d done so. As I said, listening is one thing, but telling people you&#8217;re listening is another&#8230;. Did the comment make a difference? Not really, as I had to more or less demand that they respond publically. If they&#8217;d shown up uninvited and spontaneously left a comment, that would have been more effective.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fair enough. I agree, the response should&#8217;ve come on his earlier posts. <strong>But I think their response is more significant than they&#8217;re getting credit for in the comment thread of his post.</strong></p>
<p>Every time I speak to a credit union about blogosphere criticism (or praise for that matter), I say that I&#8217;m of the opinion they should respond. Isn&#8217;t that a social media rule?!</p>
<p>I think Vancity did the right thing to respond this time on Darren&#8217;s blog. Darren might not stay with Vancity, but they explained that (a) they listen to the blogosphere, (b) they didn&#8217;t know how to respond (blogging is tough) and they&#8217;re sorry for the delay, (c) his customer service complaints are valid, and (d) they want another chance to prove it by improving.</p>
<p>And when I say &#8220;they&#8221;, I love that a real person (Sara) at Vancity responded.</p>
<p>Taking your lumps on a blog and responding is <em>better</em> than not participating in the conversation, right?</p>
Open Source CU Podcast: Episode 7/2007/02/19/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-7/
Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/02/19/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-7<p><em>Update: (5/16/2015) Our original audio file of this podcast conveniently died with Odeo sometime over the last eight years. The transcript is all we have left, but it's a good one. Enjoy!</em></p>
<p>&#8220;What would you like to see most from credit unions in 2007?&#8221;</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the final episode in our series discussing the question, and in this third installment you&#8217;ll hear from:</p>
<ul><li><a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com">Shari Storm</a>, Chief Marketing Officer at <a href="http://www.veritycu.org">Verity Credit Union</a></li><li><a href="http://www.dougtrue.net">Doug True</a>, <span class="caps">CEO</span> of <a href="http://www.forumsolutions.com"><span class="caps">FORUM</span> Solutions</a></li><li><a href="http://www.netbanker.com">Jim Bruene</a>, Editor and Founder of <a href="http://www.onlinebankingreport.com/">Online Banking Report</a></li><li><a href="http://www.cues.org">Kevin Davies</a>, VP of Professional Development at <a href="http://www.cues.org"><span class="caps">CUES</span></a></li><li>and <a href="http://www.cuceo.com">Ben Rogers</a>, Editor of the <a href="http://www.cuceo.com/"><span class="caps">CEO</span> Report</a></li></ul>
<p>After you give it a listen, leave a comment below or on our audio comments line at (206) 350-OSCU (6728). You can subscribe in iTunes <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=192789928">here</a> or download the podcast <a href="http://media.libsyn.com/media/opensourcecu/OpenSourceCU_Podcast007.mp3">here</a>.</p>
<h3>Here&#8217;s the transcript:</h3>
<p><strong>Shari Storm</strong>: This is Shari Storm from sunny Seattle, calling from Verity Credit Union. What would I like to see in 2007? Well, three things:</p>
<p>The first thing I&#8217;d like to see is credit unions becoming better at telling our story. If anybody asks, why should I join a credit union, everyone &#8211; from the oldest board member to the youngest teller &#8211; <span class="caps">AND</span> our members, should be able to answer that question &#8211; with confidence, pride, a deep understanding of who we are and what we mean to people. This is going to require a great deal of soul searching on our part. I&#8217;m not sure most credit unions agree what we actually bring to the table. What role do we play in our communities? Why are we a better alternative? What does belonging to a credit union really mean for a member at the end of the day?</p>
<p>The second thing I&#8217;d like to see is widespread innovation. I&#8217;m talking hardcore, i3, Blue Ocean, out of the box, what the heck innovation. As banks grow bigger it becomes harder for them to be nimble and creative. Now is our chance. Now is our chance to find those unexplored niches and really rise to the occasion. We can be innovative because of our size, not despite of it. Innovation energizes and I think our industry could use a little energizing about now.</p>
<p>The last thing I would like to see is credit unions captivating the attention of the young market. We have spent so many years courting the middle income, middle market. Our knuckles are bloody from going fists to cuffs with all other financial institutions. We&#8217;ve been competing on price and now we have a whole group of members who don&#8217;t get us and we are left scratching our heads over why our spread is so dismal. Young people are looking for someone to be open and honest with them; they are looking to belong to something worthwhile and good, they are looking to be trusted. These are all deep rooted credit union attributes. There is a natural partnership here but it is not one that will be easy to pull off. There are some pretty big hurdles &#8211; starting first with the age of the people leading credit unions. I read somewhere that the average age of a credit union board member is 103 (that is a joke &#8211; but we can&#8217;t deny the fact, that on average, our boards are old). Our CEOs near retirement and there has been very little turnover on our executive teams in the past few decades. We can&#8217;t rely on shining brochures or catchy tv commercials anymore. And we certainly won&#8217;t get young members by constantly complaining about how little they save. Who are we turning to for advice? Who gives us good consult when it comes to attracting young members? We can reach that market if we are open to listening to new voices in our industry.</p>
<p>So, in closing, I guess I could summarize my hopes for 2007 as seeing credit unions articulate, innovate and captivate. And hey, that rhymes, so that&#8217;s always good.</p>
<p><strong>Jim Bruene</strong>: The first thing that comes to mind is the no-brainer strategy &#8211; to put much of the credit union website content or member communications into blog format with feeds. I think this is an obvious next step for credit unions because they have done a wonderful job in the past in terms of building good educational messages and materials for members. As 2007 and 2008 roll in, there&#8217;s going to be much demand from the member base to be able to receive that information in a feed and to see it in a blog format. That&#8217;s the easy one.</p>
<p>Some of the more challenging things &#8211; the more strategic things &#8211; I think credit unions could look at is the idea of person-to-person lending. I think that really fits the credit union member base and where they are in the financial institution world. I think that most credit unions in terms of lending to their member base, but there are still a lot of members who fall through the cracks in the traditional underwriting and I think they could use some of the ideas from the peer-to-peer lenders &#8211; Prosper and Zopa-type model &#8211; to handle some of the member loan applications &#8211; maybe put those out to the member base and see if they could find funding for some of the declined applications from other members. I think that would be good for the community and would be good both for letting some members lend out and helping others who are new credits or having other problems. I think that would be a great improvement for credit unions.</p>
<p>Then the last thing that comes to mind is the area of credit bureau reporting and credit management. I think there&#8217;s still a lot of misinformation and confusion in the American public about how important it is to monitor their credit bureau so I think credit unions can do a good job in not only educating the members but also bringing to them value-priced monitoring services and credit bureau access. I think that those are still something that the credit union could offer at a break-even or perhaps earn extra revenue off of, and really help the members by offering a good credit monitoring service.</p>
<p><strong>Doug True</strong>: So here we go &#8211; top four things for credit unions in 2007. <em>Number One</em>: Robust new member gains. If we see this happening, it means credit unions are doing things that are relevant in the eyes of consumers, which is a great thing given our hyper-competitive marketplace and the fact that we haven&#8217;t grown new members in several years at the rate that we would like.</p>
<p><em>Number Two</em>: Improvements to regulations that would allow credit unions the freedom they need to serve their members. It&#8217;s been much ballyhooed about the conversions to banks and so forth and regulations seem to be the root of the problem and the conversions are somewhat of a symptom, so some improvement in regulations would definitely help in 2007.</p>
<p><em>Number Three</em>: More credit union collaboration and potentially as a result of this collaboration more credit unions doing cool stuff. This cools stuff makes my first item happen.</p>
<p><em>Number Four</em>: Better health. Yes, when you talk to friends and families about 2007 and what you&#8217;re wishing for, this is probably the number one answer. Seriously &#8211; better hearing and vision. Better hearing, you ask? Yes &#8211; listening to your members. What do they want from you? Then deliver on it. Better vision? Yes &#8211; many times members don&#8217;t know or can&#8217;t articulate what would improve their financial and overall lives. But by watching our members we should be able to see some things that we can do for them that we aren&#8217;t doing now.</p>
<p><strong>Kevin Davies:</strong> Maybe it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m new to the credit union industry, perhaps somewhat naive, regardless, it&#8217;s my hope that credit unions will continue to leverage their unique collective spirit of cooperation. After all this was the genesis of credit unions and some would say in part what maintains their tax-exempt status today. I believe the cooperative model remains a viable comparative advantage over banks.</p>
<p>I hear a lot about asset size, favorable rates, the number of products and services offered, and the quality of service, but all these: are they critical differentiators for credit unions? Although all very important to the survival of the institution, these activities can easily be replicated. I believe it is much more important to be responsive to the needs of the existing as well as the potential members, or should I say &#8220;owners.&#8221;</p>
<p>Credit unions have a distinct strategic advantage in being able to make decisions now for membership, which affects their future without having to consider the quarterly effects on shareholder value. What would it mean to members to be able to join any credit union across the land and receive the same friendly, professional, keep-you-coming-back-for-more-type service every time. How about financial records that are portable or seamless, transparent, full service that is available whenever, wherever members happen to be?</p>
<p>We need a clear, commonly understood branding message for credit unions that is recognized nationally. Something similar to the <span class="caps">ACE</span> Hardware jingle &#8211; actually this is being done right now. There are pockets of partnerships being formed all across credit union land. For example, mainstream credit unions join community-development credit unions to serve the underserved in terms of financial literacy and shared-branching programs to name just a few. Multi-owned CUSOs are forming to offer unmet member services like indirect lending, investments, insurance solutions, remote deposit, or to improve operational efficiencies.</p>
<p>Credit unions do an exceptional job learning from one another by sharing information, ideas, challenges, and even redistributing scarce resources in order to find solutions. But wouldn&#8217;t it be great if all credit unions starting right now would decide to extend a people-helping-people hand to include credit unions helping credit unions. After all, we&#8217;re all in this together for a common cause. We&#8217;re all serving our credit union members.</p>
<p>This is why programs like &#8220;Always a Member,&#8221; developed by an i3 group at Filene, makes perfect sense to me. It&#8217;s basically a locator program which attempts to make the transition from one credit union to another almost seamless for members. Why not use this same model to match up key credit union personnel to the ideal job so that the best and the brightest remain in the industry? After all, this is what a family does, right? It takes care of itself.</p>
<p>In closing, I&#8217;d like to reemphasize my wish for credit unions in this competitive environment to maintain their cooperative spirit and do what they do best only on a much grander national scale. I&#8217;ve heard it said that no one is as smart as everyone. I say no one credit union is as smart or as great as every credit union.</p>
<p><strong>Ben Rogers</strong>: There are two things I think credit unions should do in 2007: First, better use the money they already have, and, second, keep things powerfully simple.</p>
<p>Use the money you have. To be considered well-capitalized, a credit union has to maintain a seven percent net worth ratio. It&#8217;s the old rainy day fund you build up over the years. But most credit unions left 7 percent in the dust years ago. Nationally, credit unions have eleven and a half percent net worth. A little napkin math shows that in that four and a half percentage points the industry is hoarding $32 billion dollars more than it has to. Taste that number again: $32 billion dollars. Credit unions could pay cash for a company the size of BestBuy or Starbucks and still keep a few billion in change.</p>
<p>Now nobody can write a golden check on the entire stash. Instead, CEOs and boards are often sitting on $20,000, $200,000 or even $2 million that could be better used in the marketplace than in the vault.</p>
<p>I know that <span class="caps">NCUA</span> examiners hate to see net worth go down &#8211; it gives them the shakes &#8211; but <span class="caps">NCUA</span> examiners don&#8217;t serve the members, they serve the insurance fund. So pay better dividends, launch new programs or, heck, lay new carpeting &#8211; just use that net worth wisely. Credit unions have to take a hard look at that number this year. If it&#8217;s above ten percent at your shop, think about bringing it down. If it&#8217;s around fifteen percent, do some serious soul-searching. If it&#8217;s anywhere close to twenty percent &#8211; and believe me there are some out there higher than that &#8211; you are failing your members.</p>
<p>Now the second point: Keep it simple. We just did a story about Whitefish Credit Union in northwestern Montana, and I got an inkling of how powerfully simple credit unions can be. When I first went to call Charlie Abell, one of our subscribers, I did as I usually do and looked for Whitefish&#8217;s Web site. Couldn&#8217;t find it. Double checked the <span class="caps">NCUA</span>&#8217;s information. $780 million dollar credit union &#8211; check. I&#8217;d spelled “whitefish” correctly in Google &#8211; check. But still no Web page.</p>
<p>When I finally talked to Charlie, it all became clear. The credit union used to have a Web site, but it cost too much. They don&#8217;t offer checking accounts because they don&#8217;t like fees … and it would cost too much. Certificates of deposit? The marketing would cost too much. You get the idea.</p>
<p>Charlie actually gets requests for checking accounts at every annual meeting, but he always says the same thing. We don&#8217;t want to charge fees, and we don&#8217;t want to reduce our dividend rate on shares. Now get this, Whitefish credit union pays almost 5% on its regular share account &#8211; this is not a CD &#8211; this is a regular share account. And you can get a loan from Whitefish for just about anything &#8211; from $50 dollars to tide you over until payday, to $7 million dollars to build a new wing at the hospital. That&#8217;s all on the back of regular share accounts and relentless management.</p>
<p>Whitefish Credit Union is not naively simple &#8211; Charlie&#8217;s a smart guy. It&#8217;s not helplessly simple &#8211; the credit union has a boatload of capital and resources. In fact it brought in almost $90 million in deposits last year.</p>
<p>No, Whitefish is powerfully simple. The people in northwestern Montana know that Whitefish credit union pays great dividends, employs great people and sells great loans, and they&#8217;re willing to bring their business to an institution like that &#8211; and get their checking accounts somewhere else.</p>
<p>For many credit unions, it&#8217;s too late to follow Charlie&#8217;s simple model, but for those that are small and casting about for strategies, make 2007 the year you focus on being powerfully simple.</p>
How do we join the conversation when we're not invited?/2007/02/12/how-do-we-join-the-conversation-when-were-not-invited/
Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/02/12/how-do-we-join-the-conversation-when-were-not-invited<p>It&#8217;s good to be back and blogging. Thanks to Gene for picking up the slack in our absence, and to everyone we met in Seattle: thanks for making us feel so welcome!</p>
<p>Brent and I were presented a tough dilemma after our social media roundtable last week from a CU that we&#8217;ll keep anonymous:</p>
<blockquote><p>One of the companies we work with has [an internal-only] blog and the employees comment about restaurants, banks, credit unions, health clubs, etc.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve been very fortunate to have a lot of good comments [on the internal blogs] at most of our sponsor companies but every once in awhile, we get an angry member who airs grievances against us on a company intranet blog. Often, I get a copy of the blog forwarded to me.</p>
<p>Most recently, there were inaccurate claims made by the angry member.</p><p>I have no way to respond to the member &#8230; and I don&#8217;t really know how to call and let the member know I saw the blog either. [It&#8217;s been suggested that we ask someone to] respond on the intranet blog but I am concerned about that escalating the situation.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;d advise your credit union to launch a blog of your own and allow comments. You&#8217;d provide a forum for this discussion and others like it to take place on your turf. Speaking from experience, I&#8217;d rather take and respond to criticism on one of our blogs than anywhere else.</p>
<p>I agree that planting comments on the internal blog you reference would be a bad idea, as would directly contacting the member. I&#8217;d imagine that could jeopardize the job of the person sending you the posts.</p>
<p>Instead, you could make a post on your own blog that says something to the effect of &#8220;We&#8217;re launching this blog to give you an opportunity to talk directly with us about where we&#8217;re falling short. So here goes: how can we improve?&#8221;</p>
<p>Ideally, a commenter or poster on the internal blog will notice that you&#8217;re reaching out and will link it up &#8211; the conversation will continue on your blog with your participation, apologies will be issued, the fog lifts as the sun bursts forth, and the crowd of angry commenters will spontaneously join hands to sing &#8220;We Are The World.&#8221; Ok, so maybe all that flowery stuff won&#8217;t happen, but I believe your efforts will show that you&#8217;re listening and are sincere about opening up the conversation with your members.</p>
<p>Have any other folks out there been facing the same issue, and what alternatives to launching a blog (while still finding a way to participate in the conversation) am I missing? Am I giving bad advice here?</p>
Open Source CU Podcast: Episode 6/2007/01/25/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-6/
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/01/25/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-6<p>&#8220;What would you like to see most from credit unions in 2007?&#8221;</p>
<p><em>Update: (5/16/2015) Our original audio file of this podcast conveniently died with Odeo sometime over the last eight years. The transcript is all we have left, but it's a good one. Enjoy!</em></p>
<h3>Here&#8217;s the transcript:</h3>
<p><strong>Denise Gabel</strong>: A new year is always a time of personal reflection, a time to look in the mirror, take a personal inventory, own what you own and commit to change the things that you can. My wish for credit unions follows the same personal reflection philosophy and identifies three key areas.</p>
<p><em>Number 1</em>: Watch what you eat. What we eat (read) does make a difference in the way we think and act. Consider changing your monthly subscriptions to those publications, podcasts, or listservs that you don&#8217;t normally read. For magazines: perhaps the Economist, Fast Company, or even a teen magazine. For the web: perhaps Trendwatch, or better yet, set aside some quality time to simply surf the internet and see what&#8217;s going on in the marketplace outside your circle. Again, we are what we eat.</p>
<p><em>Number 2</em>: Avoid dyeing your roots. The root of the credit union industry is cooperation. Find ways to highlight cooperation by partnering with other credit unions, CUSOs, and vendors. Credit unions can stand tall in the fact that they are member-owned and there are no apologies needed. Let&#8217;s really own this one.</p>
<p><em>Number 3</em>: Prioritize your time. Watch for opportunities to stretch into a future-oriented strategic frame. So much of our time is spent putting out fires and responding to today, but who&#8217;s focused on tomorrow?</p>
<p>Make a ten a ten and a four a four. Let me explain. If membership growth is a ten in priority, make sure you invest a ten in resources. In contrast, if new carpet in the cafeteria is a four, make it a four not a ten. You&#8217;ll have to catch yourself on this one because it&#8217;s oftentimes easier to deal with all the fours.</p>
<p><em>And as a bonus wish</em>: Turn the headlines away from 2007 being one of the most challenging years on the record for credit unions instead to 2007 being the year when the credit union industry really stepped up to meet the needs of the marketplace and own what they own.</p>
<p><strong>George Hofheimer:</strong> I have three things that I&#8217;d love to see from credit unions in 2007.</p>
<p><em>Number 1</em>: Breakout strategies, differentiation and &#8220;Blue Ocean&#8221; kind of thinking. This is based on a project that we just completed and is available on our website. It really just talks about being different and the way and the line of thinking that credit unions need to engage in &#8211; and any organization in terms of being different in the marketplace &#8211; and it requires you to ask some difficult questions.</p>
<p>One of the most difficult yet simple ones is &#8220;What are we going to stop doing?&#8221; In order to create breakout strategies you&#8217;ve got to stop doing some things in 2007. One of the things I really enjoy about this publication and this line of thinking is the concept that you don&#8217;t have to compare yourself against peers or benchmark yourself against the competition because by doing so you&#8217;re essentially looking at the same market that everyone else is and you&#8217;re dividing that market into smaller and smaller pieces. So in order to differentiate and think in a break-out type of way, think about new levels of demand that you can deliver for your members at your credit union.</p>
<p><em>Number 2</em>: The second big idea is related to that. It is really committing to understanding consumers&#8217; needs. I&#8217;m a big fan of outsourcing things but I believe this is one thing that you cannot outsource. One of the real interesting research projects that we will be releasing in 2007 involves the use of ethnographic research and people that are trained in anthropology. What they&#8217;ve done is gone into people&#8217;s homes and just talked to them about their finances &#8211; talked to them about credit unions. The level of information that we discover by getting native with people is really understanding some of the latent needs that are very difficult for them to express in your typical type of market research that organizations conduct. By getting our hands dirty and actually talking to people in their homes and getting an understanding and not making any judgments in terms of how they deal with finances, we discover a lot of things.</p>
<p>A great example of this type of research and what it can yield is Bank of America&#8217;s Keep the Change program. They engaged a group of ethnographers to go into single moms&#8217; homes to gain an understanding of how they deal with finances and what they found was that moms didn&#8217;t have the time to balance their checkbooks so they rounded up to the nearest dollar in their check registry because it was really hard to do the math of the typical transactions that they had. They said, &#8220;Aha! We&#8217;ve got an idea here. Let&#8217;s put it into a product,&#8221; and amazing success resulted. So I believe credit unions can do the same thing and even more so especially since our members are our owners.</p>
<p><em>Number 3</em>: Which leads me to my third and final wish for credit unions in 2007 and that is one word: collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. If any industry or group of organizations have the ability to collaborate it is credit unions. We are cooperatives. Let&#8217;s start acting in the truest sense of the word like we are cooperatives by collaborating on some of the things that can make us more competitive in the marketplace. You look across the world: credit unions across the world and other cooperatives across the world are collaborating on a scale that US credit unions have not done to-date. Look at the Desjardins model up in Canada and even some newer examples of the Polish, the Brazilian and the Mexican credit union movements collaborating in a big way to take care of some things.</p>
<p>One thing that astonishes me: when I started in credit unions was why are these relatively small organizations, why do they each have their own data processing capability? Can&#8217;t we just outsource that and collaborate on a large scale? Not going to happen obviously for a large scale in 2007 but let&#8217;s focus on that and make that something we really aim towards achieving in the years ahead. The best time to start that is now.</p>
<p><strong>Mark Meyer:</strong> I have a wish for credit unions in 2007 &#8211; I hope credit unions are increasingly relevant to consumers. In the past, credit unions have been very successful in relying on price as a differentiation strategy. That remains relevant today for many consumers &#8211; but not all consumers.</p>
<p>Doctor William Jackson, a financial economist and Filene fellow, recently performed a study where he validated credit unions continue to outperform banks and other financial institutions with regards to pricing. However, this differentiation may not always hold true as technology continues to evolve and the economy and competition continue to increase.</p>
<p>More recently credit unions have relied on service as a differentiating factor. Recent indicators from leading firms such as McKinsey &#38; Company show that service, in and of itself, is increasingly being relied upon by financial institutions as their differentiation strategy. In essence, this means that most financial institutions believe they are different because of their service. Other financial institutions outside of the credit union space that have shareholders such as banks have discovered that providing good customer service can also result in good returns to shareholders. So how will credit unions possibly provide additional value to consumers and remain relevant to consumers in the future?</p>
<p><em>Number 1</em>: The first thing I think credit unions should explore in 2007 is being able to concisely and crisply identify what is it their credit unions do so well that their members are willing to tell the world? That is, exploring their value proposition. What makes them a unique financial institution? What makes them different and resonates with their members to the extent that they are willing and excited to talk about it? When you consider growth and credit union growth, research does show that word of mouth is one of the most effective marketing techniques and is noted to influence up to fifty percent of various types of product and service purchases.</p>
<p><em>Number 2</em>: A second way I believe credit unions can enhance their relevance to consumers is finding ways to attract and retain young adults. Credit union membership continues to age with an average age approaching fifty and the current business model of credit unions relying upon loan income and interest income. Having a younger membership and population will ensure the sustainability of credit unions.</p>
<p><em>Number 3</em>: My third wish is that credit unions, not beyond attracting and retaining young adults, look for ways to identify, attract and retain board members who have the necessary competencies to enable credit unions to be successful in an increasingly competitive financial services market.</p>
<p>I think these three wishes &#8211; identifying the value proposition, becoming relevant to young adult members and attracting and retaining board members with the competencies necessary to compete in an increasingly competitive financial services arena will ensure credit unions have a successful 2007.</p>
Credit union name changes prove controversial/2007/01/17/credit-union-name-changes-prove-controversial/
Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/01/17/credit-union-name-changes-prove-controversial<p>Former <span class="caps">FCC</span> Commissioner and current Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law <a href="http://www.nicholasjohnson.org/">Nicholas Johnson</a> weighs in on the Optiva name change on his blog <a href="http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com">FromDC2Iowa</a>.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com/2007/01/ui-held-hostage-day-62-revisiting.html">today&#8217;s post</a> Professor Johnson writes, in part:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In short, this is not the case of a new start-up company searching about for a name into which it hopes it will be able, over time, to blow some meaning and positive customer response &#8211; such as Kodak did. The <span class="caps">UICCU</span> already has that meaning and customer response. What it is proposing to do is to shoot itself in the foot by hauling out to the city dump what has cost millions of dollars and nearly 70 years to build, and start all over from scratch with a new name.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m going to turn back the clock here and quote from <a href="http://stokefire.com/blog/2006/10/03/credit-union-stays-afloat-sorry-i-got-nothin/#comment-834">Brent&#8217;s take a few months back.</a> He wrote the following on the <a href="http://www.stokefire.com/blog/">Stokefire blog</a> where a riveting discussion occurred about the Optiva and Red Canoe name changes. <a href="http://stokefire.com/blog/2006/10/03/credit-union-stays-afloat-sorry-i-got-nothin/">Get caught up on that discussion, too.</a></p>
<p>Brent said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Any name change has got to start with the membership. Is a change going to improve the member experience? Is the prospective name more reflective of the current brand than the current name? I&#8217;d agree with Denise that irrelevant naming strategies revolving around more eyeballs and pockets in the member roster is a bad call &#8211; it may create some quick growth and awareness, but its not sustainable. And if there&#8217;s one thing credit unions need to be thinking about right now, its sustainability.</p><p>I also agree that a ton of credit unions out there confuse growth with sustainability. Trying to &#8220;outbank the bank&#8221; is a fundamental error that&#8217;s going to jack a lot of credit unions up down the line. Seth Godin explains it better than I can in his blog post (and book) <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/06/small_is_the_ne.html">Small is the New Big</a>. Big banks realize this, it&#8217;s way you see more human campaigns (WaMu making fun of big bankers, Citi&#8217;s &#8220;live richly,&#8221; Wells Fargo&#8217;s <a href="http://blog.wellsfargo.com/">two blogs</a>) and products/services (B of A&#8217;s &#8220;keep the change,&#8221; Citi&#8217;s &#8220;dial zero&#8221;).</p><p>By the same token, there are a ton of circumstances in which a name-change away from that of the initial sponsorship makes a lot of sense. Having two inconsistent brands built around one name can create some serious dissonance in the market. And while yes, a parent company name does have a strong emotional <span class="caps">SEG</span> connection built-in, there&#8217;s a strong case for a credit union building a strong brand and emotional connection independently that revolves entirely around who they are and what they do.</p></blockquote>
<p>When does a CU name change make perfect sense and when does it make a mess?</p>
Open Source CU Podcast: Episode 5/2007/01/10/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-5/
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/01/10/open-source-cu-podcast-episode-5<p><em>Update: (5/16/2015) Our original audio file of this podcast conveniently died with Odeo sometime over the last eight years. The transcript is all we have left, but it's a good one. Enjoy!</em></p>
<p>&#8220;What would you like to see most from credit unions in 2007?&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the question we&#8217;ve asked some of the most innovative folks both within and outside credit unions. The response has been so refreshing, we&#8217;re breaking it up into (at least) a four-part series over the next few weeks.</p>
<p>In this first installment, you&#8217;ll hear from:</p>
<ul>
<li>Wade Lagrone of <a href="http://www.zopa.com">Zopa</a></li>
<li>Denise Wymore, <a href="http://www.denisewymore.com">Author, Blogger/Podcaster, Speaker and Brand Consultant</a></li>
<li>Colin Henderson, Consultant, Blogger at <a href="http://bankwatch.typepad.com">Bankwatch</a>, and member of the Board of Advisors at <a href="http://www.communitylend.com">CommunityLend</a></li>
<li>Rob Rutkowski, Attorney, Speaker, and contributer to the <a href="http://ciicu.libsyn.com">Current Issues in Credit Unions</a> podcast</li>
</ul>
<p>On our upcoming podcasts, you&#8217;ll hear from Mark Meyer, George Hofheimer, and Denise Gabel of the <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene Research Institute</a>, Shari Storm of <a href="http://www.veritycu.org">Verity Credit Union</a>, <a href="http://www.dougtrue.net">Doug True</a> of <a href="http://www.forumsolutions.com"><span class="caps">FORUM</span> Solutions</a>, <a href="http://obr.typepad.com">Jim Bruene</a> of the <a href="http://www.onlinebankingreport.com">Online Banking Report</a>, Ben Rogers from <a href="http://cuceo.com">The <span class="caps">CEO</span> Report</a>, Fred Johnson of <a href="http://www.cues.org"><span class="caps">CUES</span></a>, and others.</p>
<p>After you give it a listen, leave a comment <em>or your own response to the question</em> below or better yet on our audio comments line by calling (206) 350-OSCU (6728). You can subscribe in iTunes <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=192789928">here</a> or download the podcast <a href="http://media.libsyn.com/media/opensourcecu/OSCUPodcast5_lo.mp3">here</a>.</p>
<h3>As a bonus, here&#8217;s the transcript:</h3>
<p><strong>Wade Lagrone</strong>: This is Wade Lagrone from Zopa, the world&#8217;s first online way for people to lend and borrow directly with each other. Now we&#8217;re newcomers to the credit union industry in the US, and so maybe we don&#8217;t know too much. But as outsiders, maybe we can point out a few things about the industry that are so obvious that nobody talks about them anymore. So here it is. For 2007 we&#8217;d hope that credit unions get their mojo back.</p>
<p>As internet people, we&#8217;re here to say that the basic credit union idea &#8211; people helping people &#8211; isn&#8217;t just friendly, or humane, or even a way to get good rates on financial products. No, it&#8217;s that we think credit unions are cool. And we think credit unions could be the first choice of an entire new generation of American consumers.</p>
<p>Now all that sounds hard. And we know that the industry is getting older. And we know that banks keep getting bigger and spending more. But credit unions have something those guys don&#8217;t. They&#8217;ve got a soul. Only maybe in the race to match banks on features and rates, maybe that soul&#8217;s gotten a little lost. So our hope in 2007 is that credit unions can double down on what makes them special, what makes them cool. And at Zopa, we&#8217;re here to help. But no matter what we wish credit unions a happy &#8211; and a hip &#8211; New Year.</p>
<p><strong>Denise Wymore</strong>: I was speaking to an audience recently of about 110 marketers and I asked them a very simple question: &#8220;What are they doing to promote thrift?&#8221; And I got some chuckles, and I then realized that they were kind of laughing through the question; I rephrased it. &#8220;How many of you are promoting thrift?&#8221; Not one hand went up, except for the one asking me, &#8220;What does the word &#8216;thrift&#8217; mean?&#8221; And I realized my wish for 2007 is for a board of directors to buy a dictionary and to take it into a board meeting along with their credit union charter document and look up some of the words in there.</p>
<p>&#8216;Thrift&#8217; means the quality of using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully, and it&#8217;s what credit unions were founded to do &#8211; to promote thrift. And yet we have become a society that is promoting debt. There&#8217;s all kinds of statistics out there to show: American household &#8211; I looked it up this morning &#8211; the average U.S. credit card debt is $9,300. The savings rate for American households in 2006 was in the negative. Credit unions have done a lousy job of promoting thrift.</p>
<p>We also are chartered &#8211; and I can&#8217;t imagine it&#8217;s not in their credit union&#8217;s charter &#8211; that we were to do loans for provident and productive purposes. So again, look up the word &#8216;provident&#8217; &#8211; it says to provide carefully for the future. <span class="caps">A 110</span>% mortgage loan is not provident. Courtesy pay is not promoting thrift. Doing an 84 month new car loan I find it hard to believe is provident and perhaps productive for the credit union. But I think that&#8217;s my greatest wish for credit unions in 2007. That&#8217;s what we were chartered to do and we have failed miserably.</p>
<p>The second wish would be for there an emerging wealthy Boston merchant &#8211; some independent person like Edward Filene was &#8211; that is in it really because he believes in people helping people. He&#8217;s not in it for personal gain, he&#8217;s not in it for political reasons, he&#8217;s truly a good, kind person. And today I think that the structure of the leagues, of <span class="caps">CUNA</span>, has gotten so political that we&#8217;re not willing to call credit unions out when they don&#8217;t act like credit unions.</p>
<p>Case in point are the crazy mergers that are going on. There&#8217;s a statement out there that leagues support credit union self-determination. Basically, we trust that the credit unions are always acting in the best interest of their members. And yet my credit union tried to merge several years ago and sent a letter to me saying that it was going to be in my best interest if they merged. And I challenged them on every single point because it was crap. It was not in my best interest for them to merge; it was in a few employees, namely management&#8217;s, best interests personally if they merged. And someone needs to be a watchdog for this. You must be able to prove that it truly is in the members&#8217; best interest and that there is not absurd personal financial gain for some of these management people.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s my wish for 2007. I really hope after seventy-plus years of credit unions that we don&#8217;t destroy them. I don&#8217;t want to be part of that history. I don&#8217;t want to see credit unions go down on my watch.</p>
<p><strong>Colin Henderson:</strong> I&#8217;m just going to make one point I think &#8211; try to keep it simple. One thing I&#8217;ve noticed is some conversation within some of the comments on the credit union blogs &#8211; some suggestion of negativity and maybe suggestions that some credit unions have a problem with not listening.</p>
<p>I think I would take the opposite view. I&#8217;d take a look at what&#8217;s happening with your own Open Source CU, Verity&#8217;s &#8220;Who Are V&#8221;, Credit Union Online UK, (building the) Black Rock <span class="caps">FCU</span> &#8211; I think these are all good examples of a willingness to take personal accountability and speak like a real person, which is really what blogging is all about and I think it&#8217;s really what will make the difference with customers in the future.</p>
<p>These are all examples of credit unions taking it seriously, and I especially like &#8220;Who are V&#8221; who are an actual credit union demonstrating listening particularly with the storms in December and the way they were reacting to those when their branches were closed.</p>
<p>So in closing I would just say that I think credit unions have a natural advantage in forming a community because they already are a more natural community than banks. This is the perfect time for credit unions to leap into that void, listen to their customers, listen to these comments, make a point of responding to them honestly and clearly, and I think the high loyalty scores will only just go higher. This is just one thing that&#8217;s going to make it even more difficult for banks to compete with the customer loyalty scores that credit unions are able to achieve.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Rutkowski</strong>: You&#8217;ve asked, &#8220;What would you like to see most from credit unions in 2007?&#8221; Well, my message to credit unions would be don&#8217;t give up. Get past the negativity. Keep your overhead low while still focusing on member service. Try new things: commercial lending, maybe peer-to-peer lending, payday lending.</p>
<p>Credit unions are special and the movement really is a glorious thing. And there are a lot of opportunities for credit unions in 2007.</p>
Five thin-slicing observations: Credit Unions/2007/01/09/five-thin-slicing-observations-credit-unions/
Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/01/09/five-thin-slicing-observations-credit-unions<p>Our friend Mike Wagner of <a href="http://www.ownyourbrand.com">Own Your Brand</a> asked me to thin-slice credit unions. If you aren&#8217;t familiar with <a href="http://www.viralculture.com/pubs/speedthinking.htm">the concept</a>, the term comes up in Malcolm Gladwell&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324/sr=8-1/qid=1168383468/ref=pd_bbs_1/105-6878045-0283648?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books">Blink</a>, and <a href="http://www.ownyourbrand.com/2007/01/03/%e2%80%9cthin-slice%e2%80%9d-your-brand/">as Mike explains</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;Thin-slicing&#8221; refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. The goal of this meme is to get all of us to slow down this process to actually see some of the patterns we recognize long before we consciously know we see them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What do I think without thinking &#8211; what do I &#8220;thin-slice&#8221; &#8211; during a credit union visit:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Do you care that I&#8217;m here?</strong> I don&#8217;t walk into credit union lobbies daily, but when I do I usually enter as a vendor, a representative of Uncle Trabian. But the first person who greets me doesn&#8217;t know that; first off, I&#8217;m never in suit and tie. I can safely say I look like Joe Member, age 25-ish, on his lunch break. I walk in looking like the member you should be going after. Do I even get a &#8220;hello&#8221;?</li>
<li><strong>Smiles or frowns?</strong> They&#8217;re contagious, but I&#8217;m not talking about smiling fake stock photos plastered throughout posters of the American Dream afforded through a Jumbo CD. I&#8217;m talking about the last guy who walked away from the teller line. Is he smiling? Are you smiling? Did you just roll your eyes at him?</li>
<li><strong>Are you sophisticated?</strong> Specifically, are you sophisticated enough for me to trust you with my money? Look, I want friendly, but I don&#8217;t want unsophisticated. Think Fast Company vs. Reader&#8217;s Digest.</li>
<li><strong>What about the details?</strong> If you have a computer terminal up for public access, if it&#8217;s an old <span class="caps">CRT</span> monitor with a dirty keyboard, I will laugh at you. If it&#8217;s showing a Windows 95 error screen I will go to your restroom and vomit. Details, people!</li>
<li><strong>Who&#8217;s here?</strong> You&#8217;d be surprised at how many credit unions have unmanned receptionist stations during the middle of the business day. Usually a loan officer scrambles to cover. This irks me. If someone&#8217;s there, she is juggling a phone and she plays gatekeeper. It only gets worse when I say, &#8220;I&#8217;m here to see so-and-so.&#8221; I usually get the look: &#8220;What are you selling and do you even have an appointment with so-and-so?&#8221; </li>
<li>Bonus: <strong>Are you behind glass?</strong> Even worse, did you hop on the kiosk trend a few years back and separate your tellers from everyone else? Let the comment backlash begin on this one.</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks, Mike, for asking me to participate! I&#8217;d love to see the thin-slicing of financial institution websites. What say you, <a href="http://obr.typepad.com">Jim,</a> <a href="http://bankwatch.wordpress.com">Colin,</a> and <a href="http://cuemployee.blogspot.com">Robbie</a>?</p>
Opening up the ol' Credit Union (hate)mailbag/2007/01/04/opening-up-the-ol-credit-union-hate-mailbag/
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000/2007/01/04/opening-up-the-ol-credit-union-hate-mailbag<p>I was about to head out for the day when I found <a href="http://www.miss604.com/2007/01/open-letter-to-prospera-credit-union.html">this open letter to a credit union</a>. I couldn&#8217;t resist sharing it.</p>
<p>The post reads, in part:</p>
<blockquote><p>When I was 19, you gave me the run around for a couple weeks, treating me like a stranger when I asked for a loan to buy my first car. You made me get a co-signer and locked in their assets. When I was in my early 20s I paid off the entire $21,000 and you treated me like a stranger yet again. When I was 24 I wanted to get a new car, and you were no help.</p><p>Your telephone help desk operators were always rude, you made me jump through 20 hoops just to prove myself worthy of your business, and you continue to surcharge me $5.95/month on an account I haven’t used since 2004. Better yet, you will not “allow” me to close said account. I especially like how you used to hold every one of my <span class="caps">ATM</span> transactions/deposits and put 10 day holds on all my cheques. That was always really helpful.</p><p>For an institution that I have dealt with for over 20 years, you sure have a funny way of showing any kind of appreciation or at least giving me the common courtesy of pleasant and helpful customer service.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m going to repeat <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/08/13/blogger-lashes-out-against-credit-union">some advice I gave</a> to a credit union months ago when they were given the title &#8220;worst bank ever.&#8221;</p>
<ul>
<li>If you have a contact at this credit union, clue him/her in on what’s going on so they can help themselves. </li>
<li>For said credit union, <strong>publicly</strong> (through comments) explain yourselves to the blogger who wrote the post. They’d probably amend the post with your response.</li>
<li>And by all means, <strong>take it seriously.</strong> If you don&#8217;t think this will climb up the search results, ask the &#8220;worst bank ever&#8221; what they learned (or maybe didn&#8217;t).</li>
</ul>
WOM is a Unicorn with Hen’s Teeth, And I’m Sitting on One Now/2006/12/19/wom-is-a-unicorn-with-hen-s-teeth-and-i-m-sitting-on-one-now/
Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/12/19/wom-is-a-unicorn-with-hen’s-teeth-and-i’m-sitting-on-one-now<p>A funny thing occurred to me in a meeting yesterday. We were talking about how to communicate best to Gen Y, what they/we respond to, turn-ons, turn-offs. A few beats into the chat, several things hit me like several tons of bricks, respectively.</p>
<h2>First Ton</h2>
<p>Communication is communication. The base principles of polite, sincere communication, mass or one-on-one, are universal, not generational or demographic.</p>
<p>We say Gen Y appreciates Transparency™. Well, who doesn’t? Who would rather receive salesy, insincere communications on any topic over honest, take-it-or-leave-it communication? No one, that’s who. Even the people writing and distributing the salesy messages don’t like to go home and get bombarded with flashy, circus-style junk over dinner.</p>
<h2>Second Ton</h2>
<p>What is the best kind of advertising? Most people will respond with the obligatory, “Word-of-mouth.” We abide <span class="caps">WOM</span> as a sort of communicative Holy Grail. It’s as good as gold and as traceable as Unicorn tracks. A few businesses claim to rely solely on <span class="caps">WOM</span> to get their business. (PS: That’s a would-be-high-road claim for, “I’m immobilized with the fear of communicating.”)</p>
<p>It hit me that the <span class="caps">WOM</span> Unicorn is real, rideable and has a head full of hen’s teeth. When word-of-mouth happens, two people are talking, two friends, two family members, two strangers in the same isle at the grocery store. Just two people talking. If <span class="caps">WOM</span> is truly the best kind of advertising, if we really believe that to be true, then why do we burn the formula and dance on the ashes when it’s time to communicate to a broader audience? The reason is, the first steps of Homemade <span class="caps">WOM</span> will not give an immediate <span class="caps">ROI</span>. And now we have arrived at our drug of choice: Near-instant <span class="caps">ROI</span>.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">WOM</span> formula is scalable. The numbers go up, but the principle stays the same. Two people at a grocery store don’t use language like “Act Now!”, “Unbelievable Value!!”, or “<strong><em><span class="caps">SALE</span>, SALE, <span class="caps">SALE</span>!!!</em></strong>”. They converse. Your company is people. Your audience is people. Start acting like it. Start talking like two people talking, not like one person selling.</p>
<h2>Third and Final Ton</h2>
<p>This will all come together here in a second, so hang in there.</p>
<p>Credit Unions are different from Banks in the most profound way. Credit Unions are Not-for-profit and Banks are For-profit. I’m going to give you three empty lines to think about that.
<br />
<br />
<br /></p>
<p>Credit Unions and Banks are as conceptually removed from each other as East is from West. That you both deal in finance is, frankly, immaterial. So why do Credit Unions look, act and communicate like Banks? Why do you continue to send out flash-bang mailers carrying <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2005/08/31/letter-to-my-credit-union">Important Account Information!</a> to share the legitimately good news of your rates and other products? You are literally 85 million people in line at the grocery store. You are a community of commonality, a sort of Financially Conscious Anonymous. You are a support group. And support groups don’t sell each other things. They offer each other good advice, real, honest solutions to their problems, and when their words leave their lips, they don’t appear in a bright red starburst.</p>
<p>Organizations like to run weekend or seasonal specials with bright colors and they slash numbers to get the quick sale. That concept couldn’t be more removed from the Credit Union core values. Becoming financially healthy will not give instant gratification. Saving takes time. Getting out of debt takes time. These are the things you teach, delaying today’s gratification for tomorrow’s stability. Yet, when it’s time to spend a little money and effort to reach people with that news, you want instant gratification. <span class="caps">ROI</span>! ROI! <span class="caps">ROI</span>! It’s time to drink your own kool-aid.</p>
<p>You are not a Bank. You are a brand new idea. You are the printing press, cotton gin and the wheel.</p>
<p>So quit acting like the never-good-enough-for-Mom step-child of the financial world and be who you are. Roll around in who you are. Gen Y, and the whole world, is screaming out for something different, something sincere, something helpful. Give it to us. Give it to yourself.</p>
CUNA YES Summit -- Day 1, Chapter 1: Innovation/2006/12/07/cuna-yes-summit-day-1-chapter-1-innovation/
Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/12/07/cuna-yes-summit-day-1-chapter-1-innovation<p>Yesterday was the first day of <span class="caps">CUNA</span>&#8217;s first annual <a href="http://yessummit.blogspot.com/">Your Essential Strategies (YES) Summit</a> focused on serving 18-to-30s (aka Gen Y). Like some of the other authors on Open Source CU, I&#8217;m skeptical of efforts to &#8220;target&#8221; an age-based demographic, largely because those efforts towards 18-to-30s usually involve advice like &#8220;use hip-hop in your marketing so you can relate&#8221; (real advice featured in the CU Times) and &#8220;treat those youngsters as irresponsible over-spenders in need of a good &#8216;get your act together&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
<p>I say all that in order to stress the following point: <strong>so far the <span class="caps">YES</span> Summit is getting it right.</strong> The real way you get younger people interested in your credit union is to offer an innovative, compelling value proposition and by serving as a trusted advocate for financial guidance.</p>
<p>The opening speakers, Danielle Chatfield of <span class="caps">KEMBA</span> Financial CU and Susan Siegel of Sunmark CU focused on the need to innovate. I know, I know &#8211; <em>innovation</em> is a fun thing to talk about because it makes everyone feel warm and trendy in their bellies but usually translates into &#8220;That would be cool. Oh well, back to work.&#8221; But based on my previous discussions with Danielle (she&#8217;s an <a href="http://www.filene.org/home/i3">i3 member</a>) and the impression I got from Susan, neither of them take innovation lightly. Susan&#8217;s Sunmark has implemented an <a href="http://www.rateedge.com/">online-only savings account</a> (currently at 5.25% <span class="caps">APY</span>) and Danielle has demonstrated her commitment to innovation through her involvement with i3 (plus I hear good things about her from fellow CU nerds).</p>
<p>They covered several of the innovations we&#8217;ve discussed here (<a href="http://www.zopa.com">Zopa</a> in particular) and stressed the need for innovation to grow out of user needs and that <em>innovation</em> only happens when you actually implement something in the marketplace. Good ideas don&#8217;t count.</p>
<p>I also liked their closing quote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t like change, you&#8217;re going to like irrelevance even less.&#8221;&#8212;General Eric Shinseki, Retired Chief of Staff, US Army</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How appropriate.</p>
<p>So my question for you, loyal credit union innovators, is this. Are your CUs following up on the rhetoric? Do the CEOs who nod their head during discussion of innovation (this was more from the <span class="caps">CEO</span> Network than the <span class="caps">YES</span> Summit) actually follow through? Do they give you the encouragement and resources to try and fail?</p>
<p><strong>Update</strong>: Trey reminded me that Susan was also a Filene i3 member. Sorry, Susan! I thought you looked familiar.</p>
Is Wesabe the new Quicken?/2006/11/22/is-wesabe-the-new-quicken/
Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/22/is-wesabe-the-new-quicken<p>I&#8217;ve loved watching the <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/11/17/wesabe">debate</a> about <a href="http://www.wesabe.com">Wesabe</a>. The topic is more polarizing than I would&#8217;ve figured.</p>
<p>Wesabe is indeed hot right now (that&#8217;s the only bad pun in this post, I promise), and they&#8217;re getting mentions from the likes of <a href="http://gigaom.com/2006/11/20/wesabe/">GigaOm</a>, <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/wesabe_community_mon.html">BoingBoing</a>, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/20/blogophile/main2201947.shtml"><span class="caps">CBS</span> News</a> (scroll past the Michael Richards stuff), and many others.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve stayed out of the debate for the five days since my last post. I wanted to get my hands dirty with Wesabe before bashing or praising it.</p>
<p>My take: it&#8217;s not for everybody, but it <em>is</em> for me.</p>
<h3>Security</h3>
<p>Let&#8217;s start with the question that keeps coming up in comment threads. &#8220;Aren&#8217;t you concerned with the level of security here, Trey?&#8221; Not really; I&#8217;m pleased with the performance of the Wesabe Uploader and the answers they&#8217;re giving &#8216;round the &#8216;ol &#8220;blogosphere&#8221;, as the kids call it these days.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how Marc Hedlund, one of Wesabe&#8217;s founders and O&#8217;Reilly Entrepreneur in Residence, responded to security concerns expressed on a post on the <a href="http://www.piepalace.ca/blog/2006/11/web-20-inches-towards-financial-institutions-while-the-clueful-inch-away.html">Pie Palace</a> blog:</p>
<blockquote><p>First, I agree that our privacy policy needs to be improved, but nowhere do we say that we&#8217;re selling anyone&#8217;s data. We&#8217;re not. We say that we share aggregated data, which is true: any user can get it for free on any page we host. <strong>None</strong> of that data is personally identifiable &#8211; we don&#8217;t say &#8220;Josh shops at grovery store X and has $2,000 in debt.&#8221; Instead, we say that the average checkout price at Safeway is $X and Whole Foods is $Y, so you can compare what you might expect to spend at different stores. Safeway and Whole Foods are probably obvious, but when you&#8217;re comparing auto repair shops, knowing the average price and the satisfaction rating from prior customers gives you good data to choose the shop you want.</p><p>.... You are certainly correct that there are security risks to keeping financial data on your computer, but how is that any different than using Quicken on your computer, which people have been doing for 20 years now? Quicken does exactly the same thing we do with downloading your financial data. I think our model is actually better on your point, since your own computer only holds credentials and not your full transaction history in our model, whereas Quicken holds credentials <strong>and</strong> history on your machine.</p></blockquote>
<p>Sure, that&#8217;s coming from the horse&#8217;s mouth, but one thing you&#8217;ve got to understand about me and people in my demographic is how we trust who we trust. We trust based on <span class="caps">WOM</span>. Online, a lot of folks I trust (like <a href="http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/62-fireside-chat-mark-fletcher-and-marc-hedlund-part-1-of-3">37signals</a> for one) have been spreading some Wesabe love. (We first heard about Wesabe through that <span class="caps">SVN</span> post.)</p>
<h3>What Wesabe is doing <em>par excellence</em>:</h3>
<p>So what makes Wesabe different, beside the whole <a href="http://www.finance-weblog.com/50226711/wesabe_wisdom_of_crowds_for_your_finances.php">wisdom of crowds</a> thing?</p>
<ul>
<li>Budgeting is built-in and saving is tied to goals.</li>
<li>User reviews are also built in. It felt darn rewarding to assign certain merchants unfavorable ratings. It was downright gratifying. </li>
<li>Wesabe&#8217;s interface is intuitive. Painless. Pleasurable (almost fun) to go through transactions. </li>
<li>Wesabe isn&#8217;t bloated with features I&#8217;ll never need.</li>
<li>Tagging (which has become second nature to me through del.icio.us and many other Web 2.0 apps) fits what I&#8217;m already doing.</li>
<li>Wesabe conveys the following: Save towards a goal. Live within your means. Pay down your debt. Know where your money goes. Be thrifty. Get smarter about your budget.</li>
<li>It feels like I know their team. I&#8217;m encouraged by how transparent the founders are being throughout the social web (heck, their <span class="caps">CEO</span> commented on my first Wesabe post almost immediately after I wrote it &#8211; this is the case on most other blogs talking about Wesabe, too).</li>
</ul>
<p>As I mentioned, user-generated content drives Wesabe. If you don&#8217;t believe in the validity of that &#8220;wisdom of crowds&#8221; thing or in its application here, check out how <a href="http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/wesabe/join-us-on-wesabe-216200.php">Consumerist</a> is already promoting Wesabe usage.</p>
<p>For a deeper look into the company, see <a href="http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1558/lunchmeet-getting-a-taste-of-wesabe">PodTech</a> for a great video interview with Jason and Marc yesterday. Listen for their insights into the fact that financial institutions don&#8217;t yet get the social web. &#8220;Banks&#8221; and &#8220;banking&#8221; are mentioned a good bit.</p>
<p>And for an even deeper look, check the <a href="http://blog.wesabe.com/">Wesabe blog</a>.</p>
<h3>Where Wesabe needs improvement:</h3>
<p>Here&#8217;s the main thing Wesabe must address: the site is bogging down and throwing errors way too frequently. Load times are slow. This is a big problem, but I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;re working on it. Chalk it up to their newfound (and well-founded) celebrity.</p>
<h3>Why should a financial institution lose sleep?</h3>
<p>When they get the bugs worked out and they&#8217;ve built up a stronger user base, look out. Wesabeans already aren&#8217;t afraid to say where they&#8217;re getting the best deals &#8211; including tips on financial service providers.</p>
<h3>Answer the question, already, Trey!</h3>
<p>So is Wesabe the new Quicken or a glorified Web 2.0 version thereof? That would be an insult to the fine folks at Wesabe. <a href="http://blog.wesabe.com/index.php/2006/10/20/self-awareness-and-staying-engaged/">As Marc wrote last month</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where Quicken falls down, for me and for many of the other people I&#8217;ve spoken with, is in two main areas: (1) it takes <strong>way</strong> too much work to keep it up to date (see my post on <a href="http://www.wesabe.com/blog/index.php/2006/09/04/tamagotchi-software/);">Tamagotchi Software</a> and (2) it&#8217;s <strong>stuck in the past</strong>, in two senses, both by being entirely retrospective (&#8220;you were broke &#8211; you&#8217;re still broke &#8211; yup, signs point to broke&#8221;) and by focusing on the financial needs of twenty years ago (writing checks and balancing checkbooks). <strong>Self-awareness is necessary, and great, for any change you want to make. But it&#8217;s not sufficient for making a real change in your life.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in the comments of that same post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We aren&#8217;t out to replace Quicken (we&#8217;re looking for much simpler and easier tools, which necessitates leaving out a lot of what they do, and like I say I think they solve a set of problems I don&#8217;t believe match today&#8217;s needs)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Has anyone else tried it out?</p>
Wesabe/2006/11/17/wesabe/
Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/17/wesabe<p><a href="http://www.lifehacker.com">Lifehacker</a> links to <a href="http://www.wesabe.com/">Wesabe</a> in a post proclaiming <a href="http://www.lifehacker.com/software/money/wesabe-makes-saving-money-social-215287.php">Wesabe makes saving money social</a>.</p>
<p>According to Wesabe&#8217;s about page:</p>
<blockquote><p>Wesabe makes it easy to better understand how you spend your money and links you to a community of people dedicated to helping each other make better financial decisions.</p><p>Watch a three-minute overview video showing you how one of our members uses Wesabe.</p></blockquote>
<div style="text-align:center">
<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SG_w4DNpPs0" /> &lt;/param&gt; <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SG_w4DNpPs0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350" /> &lt;/embed&gt; </object>
</div>
<p>Brent and I are watching this with mouths wide open. I haven&#8217;t signed up yet, but I guess I know where at least part of my weekend is going.</p>
CUES CEO Network: Stefanie and Julie Norvaisas/2006/11/17/cues-ceo-network-stefanie-and-julie-norvaisas/
Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/17/cues-ceo-network-stefanie-and-julie-norvaisas<p><a href="http://www.design-concepts.com">Julie and Stefanie Norvaisas</a> have got some buzz going in credit union land. They&#8217;re product designers who&#8217;ve been working on an ethnographic research project that&#8217;s coming out in a few months through <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene</a>. The study deals with what really matters in the minds of credit union members.</p>
<p>During their breakout session at <span class="caps">CEO</span> Network, we got to see some fascinating video interviews with credit union members. They explained they&#8217;re finding that most members don&#8217;t get the basics of managing their finances, let alone understanding any difference between a credit union and a bank. The videos showed member after member (highly educated members in some cases) making irrational decisions about their finances and trying to explain why.</p>
<p>Some of the best takeaways from this session were about how <strong>innovation is risky, polarizing business.</strong> I agree. <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/06/22/the-what-if-that-fuels-growth">If what you&#8217;re doing doesn&#8217;t get any haters, you&#8217;re probably not innovating.</a> Innovative is not a &#8220;me-too&#8221; mini-jumbo CD. Innovative is <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/09/13/taps-zopa-and-credit-unions">Zopa</a>. Innovative is <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/04/10/more-on-high-yield-online-savings-accounts"><span class="caps">ING</span> Direct</a>. Innovative is <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/07/07/did-we-mention-tarrant-county-credit-union-rocks">Change is Good</a>.</p>
<p>They also addressed one of my pet peeves &#8211; <strong>how too many C-level CU executives are too far separated from the members they&#8217;re serving</strong>, and that may be a big reason that a lot of innovative ideas don&#8217;t make it to market. For example, I doubt payday lenders are getting a lot of business from the <span class="caps">CEO</span> set. That doesn&#8217;t mean that Joe Member isn&#8217;t standing in line at the counter begging for a short-term loan at 300% interest to get him through to the next paycheck.</p>
<p>One tip is for CEOs to make it a habit to do <a href="http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Ethnographic_Research.html">ethnographic research</a> themselves. Use your front door, walk around your lobbies, and spend some time talking to your members about their finances and not the weather, people! (Most CEOs in the room said they did this regularly.)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s encouraging that we&#8217;re hearing chatter about moving from <em>innovation to implementation</em> on credit union ideas. We&#8217;ll be talking about this in our next podcast (<em>Disclaimer: Shameless plug</em>), by the way.</p>
CUES CEO Network: Speaking of Tech Trends .../2006/11/17/cues-ceo-network-speaking-of-tech-trends/
Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/17/cues-ceo-network-speaking-of-tech-trends<p>In a session hosted by <a href="http://www.gonzobanker.com">Steve Williams</a>, mobile banking was hot.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m bringing this up because Steve, <a href="http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/digital-money-blog-mobile-banking-in-africa-7/">Colin</a>, and <a href="http://obr.typepad.com/financial_innovations/2006/11/has_mobile_bank.html">Jim</a> are in unison saying the time has come.</p>
CUES CEO Network: Worth the trip after all/2006/11/15/cues-ceo-network-worth-the-trip-after-all/
Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/15/cues-ceo-network-worth-the-trip-after-all<p>Ok I have a confession to make. Yesterday I was questioning whether or not it was a good decision for us to come to the <span class="caps">CUES CEO</span> Network.</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t that the <span class="caps">CUES</span> people weren&#8217;t friendly (they are), and it wasn&#8217;t because it was costing us a lot to be here (ok, that was part of it&#8212;the Four Seasons Aviara Resort isn&#8217;t a cheap place to stay). I was frustrated because it seemed that the meaningful conversations were either happening on the golf course or in sessions in which &#8220;press&#8221; was asked not to attend.</p>
<p>I understand the need for the CEOs and senior level executives to be able to speak freely among peers about sensitive issues, so I don&#8217;t begrudge being asked not to attend some of the sessions, but I suddenly felt as though perhaps this trip wasn&#8217;t the most effective use of our time.</p>
<p>Today changed my opinion.</p>
<p>My day started with a session conducted by Steve Williams of <a href="http://www.crnrstone.com/">Cornerstone Advisors</a> on &#8220;Emerging Trends in Credit Union Technology &#38; Delivery.&#8221; Steve&#8217;s discussion of emerging trends focused on the ways in which credit unions can add value to their members and included an introduction to peer-to-peer lending, the online habits of Gen Y, and the changing landscape of payment processing (such as using your cell phone as a contactless credit &#8220;card&#8221;.)</p>
<p>I was encouraged to hear that most of the CEOs felt their credit unions were doing a crappy job reaching Gen Y and that peer-to-peer lending was more than just a passing fad. One of the attendees even had an account through Prosper and was making over 11% on his $200 investment. So perhaps these guys are paying attention to more than we give them credit for.</p>
<p>Trey and I next attended the general session, a panel discussion facilitated by Bob Hoel of <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene</a> and including <a href="http://www.crnrstone.com/teammember.aspx?id=2">Steve Williams</a>, <a href="http://www.thinkdsi.com/aboutus/schuurmans.asp">Franck Schuurmans</a>, <a href="http://filene.org/home/about/staff/meyer">Mark Meyer</a>, and Peter Duffy of <a href="http://www.sandleroneill.com/">Sandler O&#8217;Neill</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not usually a fan of panel discussions, but <strong>when one of the panelists proposes that credit unions should go ahead and accept taxation so they can take advantage of a more friendly regulatory environment, you can bet there will be some sparks.</strong> The one thing that everybody seemed to agree on, however, is that credit unions must find a way to communicate their value through more than empty rhetoric about member-ownership and &#8220;everything we do, we do for you&#8221; feelgoodery.</p>
<p>I know this post doesn&#8217;t provide much insight into the content of the conference, but hopefully it conveys the spirit of innovation the conference was meant to inspire. <span class="caps">CUES</span> should be commended for the caliber of people they engage to present at their conferences, and I apologize for doubting that the trip would be worth our time.</p>
<p>Still, I should probably work on my golf swing.</p>
CUES CEO Network: Online Philanthropy/2006/11/15/cues-ceo-network-online-philanthropy/
Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/15/cues-ceo-network-online-philanthropy<p>When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit last year, credit unions responded. In fact the National Credit Union Foundation raised and distributed more than $3 million in the wake of Katrina alone.</p>
<p>So I was surprised to hear during today&#8217;s session on online philanthropy that virtually none of that $3 million was raised via the Internet.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">NCUF</span>, through sponsoring a new website called <a href="http://www.cuaid.coop">cuaid.coop</a>, is working to change that.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m very encouraged that this conversation is taking place before the next disaster occurs. I do believe the online philanthropy space is growing more competitive with products like <a href="http://www.chipin.com">ChipIn</a>, but credit unions can <em>and should</em> leverage the power of the network (you know, the inherent not-for-profit, cooperative aspect that ties all credit unions together).</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll get this next part out of the way as it&#8217;s unsolicited advice. (Are you really surprised that I&#8217;m offering unsolicited advice?)</p>
<p>After spending limited time on the CU Aid website, the design needs some tweakage right off the bat &#8211; but these changes would be easy: remove the flow chart along with the photo montage and take a more personal tone with the content.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s all I have to say about design and usability. I&#8217;m actually more excited about what they&#8217;re doing right, as the <span class="caps">NCUF</span> is doubtlessly striving for improvement here.</p>
<p>I believe this is the kind of online engagement to which many credit union members will respond: it unites members (and credit unions as a whole) around a cause. From what I&#8217;ve seen it&#8217;s not uncommon for credit unions to experience great success in offline fundraising efforts. Couple that with the success of other nonprofits raising donations online and it&#8217;s a pretty clear indication of the potential here.</p>
<p>Moreover, it struck me that an approach like this helps protect members from the fraudsters who prey on the good-natured by launching fake donation sites in the wake of an event like Katrina or the 2004 Asian Tsunami.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;ve got two cents on this, what advantages or disadvantages do you see?</p>
CUES CEO Network: Author and Fast Company cofounder Bill Taylor/2006/11/13/cues-ceo-network-author-and-fast-company-cofounder-bill-taylor/
Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/13/cues-ceo-network-author-and-fast-company-cofounder-bill-taylor<p>I know, I know. You&#8217;re tired of the &#8220;movement vs. industry&#8221; debate, but please play along one more time.</p>
<p>A few months back <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/08/01/open-source-cu-podcast-issue-1">I claimed</a> the debate wasn&#8217;t a particularly important one. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.</p>
<p>Brent&#8217;s <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/10/04/what-movement">What Movement?</a> post swayed me, however. The more I think about it, the more I realize that without a movement, there&#8217;s no meaningful difference between a credit union and a bank.</p>
<p>This morning, <a href="http://www.mavericksatwork.com/">Bill Taylor</a> spoke on the characteristics of &#8220;Maverick&#8221; companies and how they stand for more than the status quo &#8220;service and convenience&#8221; &#8211; how companies who make a difference in the marketplace do business with a clear, distinctive, <em>disruptive</em> purpose.</p>
<p>Hearing him speak got me all fired up. He got me thinking about who&#8217;s really making a difference out there in credit union land. There are individual credit unions innovating, no doubt, but they&#8217;re anomalies among the 8,000. As a whole, the &#8220;movement&#8221; isn&#8217;t moving.</p>
<p>He got me thinking why credit unions were called a movement in the first place.</p>
<p>Credit unions <em>were</em> a movement because they were the original peer-to-peer lenders (not in a predatory sense, either). Joe Factoryworker couldn&#8217;t get a loan at the bank, so he and other Joes and Janes pooled their resources. By the way, that peer-to-peer idea is still very powerful (look at Zopa, BitTorrent, etc.).</p>
<p>Credit unions <em>were</em> a movement because the credit union idea spread <em>like a movement spreads</em>. I&#8217;m sorry, but healthy movements don&#8217;t shrink or stagnate. Maybe that&#8217;s a large part of why I&#8217;m writing this post.</p>
<p>That being said, I see pockets of movement &#8211; but as a whole, we&#8217;ve got an industry on our hands. I wholeheartedly want credit unions to regain movement. And if it comes, it&#8217;s going to come from innovation, disruption, and uniqueness spreading outward from those pockets <em>much like the movement that created credit unions in the first place</em>.</p>
<p>Bill mentioned movement right off the bat. He started his keynote with, &#8220;I&#8217;m well aware that this is not just an industry; it&#8217;s a movement.&#8221; It was the only point of his address of which I&#8217;d disagree. In all fairness, even that was half-right. Until further notice, <strong>it&#8217;s an industry in need of a movement.</strong></p>
<p>We had announced that we&#8217;d be coming out to this conference, but we haven&#8217;t articulated the big reason <em>why</em>. We&#8217;re trying to find those pockets of movement and amplify them. We&#8217;re here to take ideas that don&#8217;t make it to print &#8211; that aren&#8217;t being recorded elsewhere save in the notebooks of some real disruptive/innovative CEOs and executive team members &#8211; and to help those ideas spread. Hence the &#8220;Open Source&#8221; in Open Source CU. Free of charge. Take &#8216;em or leave &#8216;em.</p>
<p>There was more in Bill&#8217;s address than I could possibly cover here. He spoke about <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/10/13/grameen-bank-founder-wins-nobel-prize">Muhammed Yunus and Grameen Bank</a>, <span class="caps">ING</span> Direct, Commerce Bank and handfuls of other great examples of disruptive groups fighting for causes. Rather than reporting all that, I wanted to write about the string of firecrackers that he lit in my brain that&#8217;s taken me a good four hours to write out.</p>
<p>What else would you expect from the cofounder of Fast Company?!</p>
Moment of truth/2006/11/12/moment-of-truth/
Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/12/moment-of-truth<p>Two days after Shari blogged about how Verity means <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2006/11/state-or-quality-of-being-true-or-real.html#comments">the state or quality of being true or real</a>, they got a big chance to prove it. Their website got hacked.</p>
<p>From yesterday&#8217;s <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2006/11/spoofing-alert.html">Spoofing Alert</a> post:</p>
<blockquote><p>It appears that our log-in button has been re-routed to an unauthorized website. We are in the process right now of trying break the link or pull down our site.</p><p>Please do not log in to home banking at this time.</p><p>If you did try to log on earlier today and were asked for your credit card numbers <span class="caps">AND YOU GAVE THEM</span>, please call this number immediately to notify us at 1-800-444-4589 option 2. Please leave us a message and we will return your call as soon as possible.</p><p>We will keep you updated on this blog site.</p></blockquote>
<p>They&#8217;ve since pulled the main website down completely &#8211; <em>and their blog is, from what I can tell, the primary point of online contact for their members.</em> <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2006/11/spoofing-alert.html#comments">From an exchange in the comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Anonymous:</strong> I answered some screening questions the last time I logged in e.g mothers maiden name, etc. Were these authentic or spoofed?</p><p><strong>Shari:</strong> It appears that the spoofing happened about 10 am this morning &#8230;. Unfortunately, those questions you answered were not from us. Without saying too much (because the perpetrators can read this site as well as we can) we have done a few things to shore up the problem but are not ready just yet to announce that everything is fixed.</p><p><strong>Anonymous:</strong> It was actually already happening this morning at 6:30&#8230; long before 10.</p><p><strong>Shari:</strong> Thank you for letting us know that. I had logged on at 5 am yesterday morning and everything was fine. The next confirmed log-in that we received was 10:00 am. So we now know it happened sometime between 5:00 am and 6:30 am.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://obr.typepad.com/financial_innovations/2006/11/verity_credit_u.html">Jim Bruene</a> picked up on this first, and he points out there&#8217;s a &#8220;silver lining.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>As bad as this is, Verity should be applauded for the rapid response, using both its website and blog to get the word out.</p></blockquote>
<p>Shari, this drama will pass. The last two posts you&#8217;ve made have probably been the toughest ones you&#8217;ve ever had to write, knowing that all of your online members&#8217; eyes are now being directed to your blog. Keep your chin up; you&#8217;re <em>making Verity&#8217;s name match the definition</em>.</p>
<p>To everyone else, this should long serve as a case study of a blog&#8217;s potential as much more than a corporate marketing tool.</p>
Blacklisted? I just wanted to stop the spam/2006/11/02/blacklisted-i-just-wanted-to-stop-the-spam/
Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/11/02/blacklisted-i-just-wanted-to-stop-the-spam<p><img src="/images/legacy/offendingemail.jpg" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" />Inspired by the following bad experience and posts <a href="http://obr.typepad.com/financial_innovations/2006/11/paypal_email_si.html">here</a>, <a href="http://cuinthenews.com/weblog.php?id=454a2193816a4">here</a> and <a href="http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/spam-bot-herds-and-threats-to-the-internet-lifestyle/">here</a>, I&#8217;ll give you my two cents on email marketing.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, I got an email from CU Times. (I didn&#8217;t even remember what was being sold until I dug through my trash to grab this screenshot. But I didn&#8217;t forget the sender&#8217;s identity.)</p>
<p>So I clicked on the unsubscribe link as soon as I got the piece of spam, thinking I could spare my inbox from similar sales attempts. Instead I was led through a process I understood as: either you continue to receive spam or you can&#8217;t subscribe to our online publication at all. (If only all decisions were this easy!)</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s part of the confirmation email I received:</p>
<blockquote><p>Goodbye from our Newsletter, sorry to see you go.</p><p>You have been unsubscribed from our newsletters.</p><p>This is the last email you will receive from us. We have added you to our &#8220;blacklist&#8221;, which means that our newsletter system will refuse to send you any other email, without manual intervention by our administrator.</p></blockquote>
<p>Blacklisted? Since you left us once, don&#8217;t come back again?</p>
<p>Now I&#8217;ve sat on this post for a couple of days. I didn&#8217;t want to get into the whole spam debate, but it kept gnawing at me and I had to air it out. I wish email blasts would go the way of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Pepsi">Crystal Pepsi</a>. There. I&#8217;ve said it.</p>
<p>Am I making the case for all email marketing to be shelved? No. Brent talked me out of that post. He believes email marketing is a necessary evil in the marketer&#8217;s toolbox. What are you going to replace it with? <span class="caps">RSS</span>? Not yet.</p>
<p>So after a healthy interoffice debate this afternoon we came up with the following short list so that if you do rely on email marketing, here&#8217;s how you can ease the animosity felt by some of your recipients:</p>
<ul>
<li>Avoid big images and the &#8220;click here&#8221; ads.</li>
<li>Cut the marketing fluff and get to the point.</li>
<li>Personalize your messages <a href="http://obr.typepad.com/financial_innovations/2006/11/paypal_email_si.html">like Jim points out with this PayPal email</a>.</li>
<li>Follow a pattern (send emails at regular intervals) and only interrupt that pattern for the truly important/urgent stuff. Anything else is crying wolf.</li>
<li>Offer <span class="caps">RSS</span> as an alternative for folks like me.</li>
<li>Allow subscribers to opt out easily. And treat them respectfully if you ever want their eyes again.</li>
</ul>
<p>I&#8217;ll expand on that last point a little more. In other words, don&#8217;t treat your audience like they should count it a privilege to cast their eyes upon you. If we&#8217;ve learned anything in this new media landscape, that&#8217;s it, right?</p>
Second Life primer/2006/10/30/second-life-primer/
Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/10/30/second-life-primer<p><img src="/images/legacy/matt_sl.gif" alt="Position of honor for a Nobel Prize winner" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></p>
<p>I had an interesting conversation with <a href="http://www.netbanker.com">Jim Bruene</a> (whose blog you should definitely be reading) last week about <a href="http://www.secondlife.com">Second Life</a>, a &#8220;<a href="http://secondlife.com/whatis/">3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents</a>.&#8221; Second Life was opened to the public in 2003, so it&#8217;s not exactly new. However, its business implications have made for some explosive hype/conversation recently.</p>
<p>And for all of you who are thinking &#8220;what a bunch of nerds&#8221;...touche. I thought the same thing. But I&#8217;ve gathered some stats that show the degree to which Second Life has broken out of the &#8220;dork-in-his-mom&#8217;s-basement&#8221; demographic:</p>
<p><small>(some numbers will have changed after the posting of this article)</small></p>
<ul>
<li>There are currently 1,192,576 residents, and growing.</li>
<li>$567,793, that&#8217;s real-live US dollars, spent in the last 24 hours.</li>
<li><a href="http://obr.typepad.com/financial_innovations/second_life/index.html">Wells Fargo was in SL over a year ago</a>. They&#8217;ve since uprooted their &#8220;Stagecoach Island&#8221; presence to be its own world, independent from Second Life (a lame move, if you ask me).</li>
<li><a href="http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/7ba1af8f3812d010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/3.html">There are at least 3,000 entrepreneurs making $20,000 or more a year on SL businesses.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://news.com.com/Reuters+Second+Life+reporter+talks+shop/2008-1043_3-6129335.html?tag=st.num">Reuters has embedded a reporter, Adam Pasick, in SL</a>. They also have an office.</li>
<li>Mammoth ad agency <a href="http://www.leoburnett.com/">Leo Burnett</a> (clients include McDonald&#8217;s, Kellog&#8217;s, and Wrigley&#8217;s) has set up a <a href="http://lbtoronto.typepad.com/lbto/2006/09/second_life_leo.html">SL idea hub</a>, where its creatives can come collaborate. <a href="http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/"><span class="caps">BBH</span></a>, another hugely successful agency (clients include <span class="caps">AXE</span>, Smirnoff, and Levi&#8217;s), is <a href="http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/10/first-look-at-bartle-bogle-hegartys.html">also in SL</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.crayonville.com/">Crayon</a> is a new marketing firm made up of impressive players located globally. They launched the company with Coca-Cola as a client. Their main office is in SL.</li>
<li>Harvard Law has a class in SL, called <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/">CyberOne &#8211; Law in the Court of Public Opinion</a>. </li>
<li>Harvard Business Review moderated a <a href="http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/06/attend_a_market.html">marketing conference that happened in SL</a> in June.</li>
<li>SL has its own newspaper, called <a href="http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/">The Second Life Herald</a>.</li>
<li>SL has its own <a href="http://www.springwise.com/gaming/tour_guides_for_virtual_travel/">travel agency</a> that will show you the hottest hot-spots for a price.</li>
<li>A few companies with a commercial SL presence include:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/10/nissan_puts_sentra_into_second.html">Nissan</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2006/id20060627_217800.htm">American Apparel</a></li>
<li><a href="http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/10/reeboks-store-in-second-life.html">Reebok</a></li>
<li>Coca-Cola</li>
<li>GSD&#38;M</li>
<li><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2006/id20060823_925270.htm?chan=innovation_innovation%20+%20design_innovation%20and%20design%20lead">Starwood Hotels</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Vioxx gives you free in-SL phone minutes. <a href="http://laptopmag.com/News/Industry/Million-Minutes.htm">You can call your mom from inside SL</a>.</li>
<li><span class="caps">IBM</span> ran a <a href="http://eightbar.co.uk/2006/06/27/wimbledon-in-second-life/">live Wimbleton simulator on SL</a>.</li>
<li>SL has its own <a href="http://slbusinessmag.com/edition/">business magazine</a>.</li>
<li>The American Cancer Society <a href="http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/chris/?p=99">raised over $30,000 in SL</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>BusinessWeek writer <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2006/10/second_life_mys_1.html">Bruce Nussbaum made one great point on his blog</a> about using Second Life as a reflection of consumer intentionality:</p>
<blockquote>The more I see in Second Life, the more I realize that one of the most important business opportunities there is mining intentionality. This is a phrase my brilliant colleague Frank Comes came up with to describe what&#8217;s going in in that space.<br /><br />
<p>People in SL are expressing what they would <span class="caps">LIKE</span> to do in reality. For example, it&#8217;s easy to pimp your car in second life and clearly lots of people want to customize their transport there. All the major auto companies are piling into SL to learn about this&#8212;and build their big after-market customizing business in the real world.&lt;/blockquote&gt;</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not saying to run out and start a Second Life credit union, but then again maybe someone should. Either way, this is another interaction tool that everyone should be keeping an eye on.</p>
<p>ps: The picture above is Matt&#8217;s Second Life avatar, &#8220;Trabian Pro.&#8221; It looks way too much like the thing.</p>
</blockquote>
Credit Unioning circa 1985/2006/10/18/credit-unioning-circa-1985/
Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/10/18/credit-unioning-circa-1985<p>You know, I actually had some worthwhile topics up my sleeve to write about today&#8230;but I&#8217;ve dropped them in favor of posting <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxP4eAfXZA">this YouTube video</a> on &#8220;Credit Unioning.&#8221;</p>
<p>My favorite part is the maw-maw at the end talking about her &#8220;hot little number.&#8221;</p>
<p>I hope you laugh as hard as we did:</p>
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LWxP4eAfXZA" />&lt;/param&gt;<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />&lt;/param&gt;<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LWxP4eAfXZA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" />&lt;/embed&gt;</object>
Grameen Bank founder wins Nobel Prize/2006/10/13/grameen-bank-founder-wins-nobel-prize/
Fri, 13 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/10/13/grameen-bank-founder-wins-nobel-prize<p>Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded have <a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/">won the Nobel Peace Prize</a>. If you haven&#8217;t read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Banker-Poor-Micro-Lending-Against-Poverty/dp/1586481983/sr=8-1/qid=1160745287/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2974250-7416744?ie=UTF8">Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty</a> then you may want to give it a shot&#8212;it&#8217;s a very worthwhile read.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a quote from <a href="http://reuters.myway.com/article/20061013/2006-10-13T114531Z_01_L12323678_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-NOBEL-PEACE-DC.html">an article about the prize</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee said the elimination of poverty was a path to peace and democracy.</p>
<p>&#8220;Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,&#8221; it said in the award citation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I particularly like the line &#8220;<strong>work to bring about their own development</strong>&#8221;. One of the reasons <a href="http://www.trabian.com">we</a> are so passionate about the credit union industry is its potential to impact the <em>negative</em> US savings rate and help people reduce their dependence on the likes of &#8220;payday lenders.&#8221; The Grameen story is so powerful because it has significantly reduced poverty by helping its customers help themselves, not by providing a handout.</p>
<p>Financial responsibility can&#8217;t (and shouldn&#8217;t) be forced. But I think credit unions can do a lot more to encourage and facilitate good behavior. <strong>Our goal is to change this from &#8220;we wish&#8221; to &#8220;here&#8217;s how.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trabian/268523976/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/79/268523976_470efe50ae_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Position of honor for a Nobel Prize winner" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a>Also, a special thanks to George at <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene</a> for letting us borrow his copy of &#8220;Banker to the Poor.&#8221; I would send it back, but Brent just started reading it this week. It&#8217;s currently sitting in a <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trabian/268523976/">position of honor</a> at Trabian headquarters.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 40px;">On second thought, George, we may need to send you a new copy.</p>
What Movement?/2006/10/04/what-movement/
Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/10/04/what-movement<p>If you&#8217;ve been reading this blog for any length of time/listening to the podcast/heard me speak you&#8217;ve probably heard me talk about the imprisoned qualities of &#8220;The Credit Union Movement.&#8221;</p>
<p>If not, here&#8217;s a quick breakdown:</p>
<p>At every credit union event or conference I attend, and without a doubt when talking with clients about &#8220;the credit union difference,&#8221; an unreal amount of passion will surface for credit unions as a social movement. Those that have been in credit unions for long enough sometimes just refer to credit unions as &#8220;The Movement.&#8221; At the last conference I was at, people were in tears at an awards dinner because of the change they and their credit unions had made happen in the community. Employees of credit unions are
passionate about this stuff, man.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s where it stops, and that&#8217;s a problem. How many members think of credit unions as a social movement? How many members actually see themselves as <em>a part</em> of a movement? How many members actually have pride in the fact that they are a part of something that is working to change the consumer finance landscape?</p>
<p>These questions are only partially rhetorical.</p>
<p>And here&#8217;s another question to all of you credit unioners -<em> </em>Do you actually, really and truly, see yourselves as a part of a movement? This question is definitely not rhetorical. </p>
<p>I&#8217;ve heard both sides of the coin. Yes, industry&nbsp; folks get jazzed about &#8220;The Movement&#8221; (on a side note, I don&#8217;t think &#8220;industry&#8221; and &#8220;movement&#8221; have to be mutually exclusive).&nbsp;But some of the smartest CU people I&#8217;ve spoken to have said &#8220;No. Credit unions are not a movement, and they need to stop tossing that term around. It&#8217;s a feel-good claim that they aren&#8217;t living out. &#8221; And you know what? I&#8217;m sorry, but there&#8217;s some validity to this. </p>
<p>Credit unions, if you&#8217;re a movement, why do 90% of you communicate yourselves as a commodity? Why have&nbsp;I never seen a single piece of consumer-side credit union marketing that mentions your movement? And more importantly, what are you doing to fuel that movement? What are you afraid of? </p>
<p>I submit this: <strong>You are a movement. </strong>But the movement has been hijacked by those who are afraid to polarize, who are afraid to be too movementy because movements cause opinions, and not all opinions are good. </p>
<p>One of <a href="http://boomcreative.biz/">Boom Creative&#8217;s</a> clients is a credit union that refuses to give loans for Hummers. <a href="https://www.vancity.com/">Vancity</a> offers <a href="https://www.vancity.com/MyMoney/ProductsandServices/Borrowing/Loans/CleanAirAuto/">clean-air auto loans</a>, among other things. <a href="http://filene.org/home/about/staff/hofheimer">George Hofheimer</a> sent me a case study of a cooperative bank in the UK that refuses to lend money to companies who, among other things, <em>oppress the human spirit</em> (I&#8217;ll be writing more on this case study soon, its awesome). </p>
<p>I&#8217;m just asking questions here, but what if more credit unions out there decided to <em>stand</em> for something besides &#8220;Value, Service, and Convenience&#8221;?</p>
<p>Bottomline: if you&#8217;re going to be a movement, claim it. If not, stop flippantly throwing that word around. </p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
Advice to a newbie: Seven tips on starting a blog/2006/10/03/advice-to-a-newbie-seven-tips-on-starting-a-blog/
Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/10/03/advice-to-a-newbie-seven-tips-on-starting-a-blog<p>I recently got an email from someone ready to blog.</p>
<p>He wrote, in part:</p>
<blockquote><p>I need someone to get me going&#8230;. I am attaching my press release so you know more about what I am doing&#8230;.</p><p>Here&#8217;s what I need:</p><ul><li>someone to put together the first entries</li><li>help getting my blog linked to others in the blogosphere</li><li>create the look of the blog</li></ul><p>I have been told this is such a great way to drive people to a website.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;ve recently had other conversations similar to this, and it seems we&#8217;re at a point where most businesspeople have heard of blogs and have even picked up on the business case for blogging &#8211; but there&#8217;s a big distinction in &#8220;hearing about it&#8221; and &#8220;getting it&#8221;. And if you&#8217;re going to blog as part of your business strategy, you&#8217;ve got to <em>get it</em> first.</p>
<p>Yes, blogging can definitely increase your exposure on the web, build a community around your ideas, and introduce you to many thoughtful, interesting people. But here are a couple of important things to consider before diving in:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Blogging is great for spreading ideas &#8211; but not so much for spreading press releases.</strong> In fact, bloggers who come across as self-promotional get ignored and sometimes lampooned by other bloggers. On our blogs, we&#8217;re careful not to promote our company&#8217;s products and services. We might announce a new client, but we try to tell a story about that client rather than being self-promotional. And we disclose the relationship to our readers.</li>
<li><strong>If you&#8217;re going to blog, you&#8217;ve got to do it in your own words.</strong> Your blog must start out and remain transparent and honest, and it&#8217;s got to be authentically yours. Most bloggers can spot inauthenticity a mile away, so I&#8217;d strongly advise against having anyone else write for you.</li>
<li><strong>Link to other bloggers first. If you make quality posts, you&#8217;ll get incoming links. And always, always, always give attribution if you write about something you see elsewhere.</strong> For example, if you write about something you see on our blog, we&#8217;ll probably link back to you either immediately or shortly after we discover the mention as a courtesy. <em>While we&#8217;re on this topic, it&#8217;s come to our attention that we&#8217;re not getting citation in mainstream industry publications apparently using this blog as fodder. We always link (even to print publications) and we expect the same in return. Golden rule. There. I got that off my chest.</em></li>
<li><strong>Read many blogs and leave plenty of comments before you start your own.</strong> So I guess it&#8217;s best said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t dive in.&#8221; Get a feel first. If you&#8217;re in credit unions, visit blogs on our <a href="www.opensourcecu.com/pages/blogroll">blogroll</a> and actively participate in other conversations by commenting (both on those blogs and on blogs dealing with other topics that may interest you) to see examples of what&#8217;s acceptable. Pay attention to posts that get conversations going. Buy some blogging books while you&#8217;re at it. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Conversations-Changing-Businesses-Customers/dp/047174719X/sr=8-1/qid=1159900989/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8616896-6922304?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books">Naked Conversations</a> rocks and is required reading.</li>
<li><strong>If you&#8217;re starting a blog and you&#8217;re unsure if you&#8217;re going to stick with it for the long haul, go <em>free</em> first and move to a custom design later.</strong> Creating the look of the blog comes when you sign up for a free blog hosting service like WordPress or Blogger. There are plenty of templates available, and there&#8217;s nothing wrong with using one of these at first. I&#8217;d suggest you get your feet wet with a ready-made template first then you can decide if a custom design is worth the investment. Some free services even allow you to customize the design if you can find someone to edit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets"><span class="caps">CSS</span></a>.</li>
<li><strong>Be prepared to make a major time commitment.</strong> I get this question often: &#8220;Does it take a lot of time?&#8221; Yes, it does, especially if you want your blog to be a success at getting more traffic, spreading ideas, serving as a creative outlet, introducing you to new folks, and enhancing your brand. If you can&#8217;t make that time commitment, you should probably hold off until you&#8217;re ready. In my case, I might make two to three posts per week (sometimes only one), but I&#8217;m always reading and commenting on other blogs. I probably spend an hour of each workday doing something related to Open Source CU, even when I&#8217;m not writing a post. (This one has taken about four hours). It&#8217;s not for everybody, but if you can invest the time and creative energy, it&#8217;s worth it.</li>
<li><strong>Be prepared to hear crickets chirping for a while.</strong> Comments are hard to come by and so is traffic, for that matter (especially on a niche blog). For many months the only conversation going on here happened when Brent would leave a comment on something I&#8217;d posted. But persistence pays off. And mildly controversial posts don&#8217;t hurt either.</li>
</ul>
<p>How would you have responded to his email? When I refine this list down the line, what other tips should I include?</p>
Credit Union CEO blogs with members/2006/09/08/credit-union-ceo-blogs-with-members/
Fri, 08 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/09/08/credit-union-ceo-blogs-with-members<p><a href="http://savingsloans.typepad.com/"><img src="/images/legacy/ceolink.jpg" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a>We&#8217;ve been looking for a credit union <span class="caps">CEO</span> to blog with members in a setting that allows comments and offers <span class="caps">RSS</span>. Thanks to <a href="http://bankingreview.blogspot.com/2006/09/banking-ceo-thats-willing-to-blog.html">The Better Banking Blog</a>, we&#8217;ve found one.</p>
<p>From the post:</p>
<blockquote><p>Online Banking Review first wrote about blogging and banking in 2004, but I think it&#8217;s fair to say blogging has now gone mainstream. In the current issue&#8217;s feature on <a href="http://obr.onlinebankingreview.com.au/">Web 2.0</a>, Hothouse founding partner Simon van Wyk says &#8220;Anyone who runs a business needs to run a blog.&#8221;</p><p> .... Google the words &#8220;bank blog&#8221; and you’re more likely to find a hardened blogger complaining about poor customer service from a bank rather than a contribution from the industry.</p><p>But while the banks may be silent on the blog front, a credit union chief executive in South Australia has taken up the challenge. Greg Connor, who runs Savings &#38; Loans Credit Union, uses <a href="http://savingsloans.typepad.com/">his blog</a> to communicate to the credit union&#8217;s 170,000 members and even takes the time to respond to their posts.</p></blockquote>
<p>Connor is making some great posts, and his members are responding. There&#8217;s a community in his comment threads. It&#8217;s a great example of how CU executive teams should be conversing with their members.</p>
<p>It has, however, been a couple of weeks since his last post, but a lot of C-level blogs in other industries follow this pattern. Hey, in that position, your readers understand: you&#8217;re a busy guy. The infrequency does make a good argument for using a group blog approach, but even we&#8217;ve been known to push two weeks between posts on Open Source CU (we still have that problem on the <a href="http://www.trabian.com">Trabian blog</a>).</p>
<p>Is it just me or has there been a recent spike in financial institutions participating in the social web?</p>
TechCrunch on ChangeEverything/2006/09/06/techcrunch-on-changeeverything/
Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/09/06/techcrunch-on-changeeverything<p>Congrats to <a href="http://www.vancity.com">Vancity</a>, <a href="http://www.socialsignal.com">Social Signal</a>, and the rest of the <a href="http://changeeverything.ca">ChangeEverything</a> team for a stellar review on <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com">Techcrunch</a>. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/06/changeeverything-makes-goal-sharing-a-quiet-advertisement/#comments">From Marshall Kirkpatrick&#8217;s post</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> I think this is a great example of a company making use of Web 2.0 tools to promote themselves in a way that places the balance of the impact on providing value to users and incurs promotional benefits for themselves as a consequence of that. Though this model may seem less immediately lucrative, it&#8217;s also much less likely to face the kind of anti-corporate backlash bubbling up in MySpace and YouTube.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Read the <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/06/changeeverything-makes-goal-sharing-a-quiet-advertisement/#comments">full post</a>, leave a comment, and spread some cooperative love.</p>
Trey on "Current Issues in Credit Unions" podcast/2006/08/30/trey-on-current-issues-in-credit-unions-podcast/
Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/08/30/trey-on-current-issues-in-credit-unions-podcast<p><a href="http://www.ciicu.com"><img src="/images/legacy/lookitme%21.jpg" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a>Our very own <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/author/trey-reeme">Trey Reeme</a> is a guest on the latest episode of <a href="http://ciicu.com/">Current Issues in Credit Unions</a>. And, might I say, he is quite eloquent and likeable.</p>
<p>Topics range from &#8220;Google-bombing&#8221; to &#8220;ways a credit union can improve its bottom line&#8221; to the melancholy business of &#8220;dealing with the death of a member&#8221; (legally, not emotionally).</p>
<p>Get it in iTunes, download it directly <a href="http://media.libsyn.com/media/ciicu/Current_Issues_in_Credit_Unions_Episode_5.mp3">here</a>, or visit the <a href="http://www.ciicu.com">CiiCU site</a> to listen.</p>
<p>And yes, I was making faces at him during most of the conference call.</p>
Blogger lashes out against credit union/2006/08/13/blogger-lashes-out-against-credit-union/
Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/08/13/blogger-lashes-out-against-credit-union<p>About a week ago, I ran across <a href="http://cullenwaters.blogspot.com/2006/07/vystar-credit-union-worst-bank-ever.html">this blog post ranting about a credit union I won&#8217;t name here</a>.</p>
<p>The blogger&#8217;s goal was plainly stated: get the credit union to the number one slot on a Google search for <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=worst+bank+ever&#38;btnG=Google+Search">worst bank ever.</a></p>
<p>They succeeded at both handing said CU <em>that</em> title and the Google #1 slot of <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=worst+credit+union+ever&#38;btnG=Google+Search">worst credit union ever</a> as well.</p>
<p>Now I don&#8217;t know the fine folks at this credit union, but I do know the complaints against them on that blog aren&#8217;t at all justified &#8211; but that&#8217;s not the point.</p>
<p>So I sent a contact request through their website to offer some help. Upon doing so, I got this message (I&#8217;ve tried on two separate days including right before making this post):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;An error has occured. Please call your Financial Institution with this reference number: xxxx.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s not good.</p>
<p>If you have a contact at this credit union, clue him/her in on what&#8217;s going on so they can help themselves. This doesn&#8217;t have the implications of the <a href="http://www.intuitive.com/blog/debunking_the_myth_of_kryptonite_locks_and_the_blogosphere.html">Kryptonite lock ordeal</a>, but they really should stand up for themselves on this.</p>
<ul>
<li>Step 1: Explain yourselves to the bloggers who wrote the post. They&#8217;d probably amend the post with your response. You&#8217;d look much better &#8211; you&#8217;d be responsive and open to someone who doesn&#8217;t deserve it. Be the better people here. Hey, it&#8217;s not fair, but that&#8217;s life.</li>
<li>Step 2: Fix the contact form on your website. That&#8217;s just plain frustrating.</li>
</ul>
<p>Any other ideas?</p>
Brilliance from Bankwatch and GonzoBanker/2006/08/11/brilliance-from-bankwatch-and-gonzobanker/
Fri, 11 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/08/11/brilliance-from-bankwatch-and-gonzobanker<p>Colin posted a great response at <a href="http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/2006/08/10/vancity-responds-to-criticism/">Bankwatch</a> about the Vancity site:</p>
<blockquote><p>Vancity&#8217;s <span class="caps">ROE</span> may be half that of the chartered banks, by design, due to membership benefits. However that doesn&#8217;t give Credit Unions exclusivity to the notion of community development. They may be good at it, but they are not exclusive owners of it.</p><p>So well done to Vancity in carving out this space for themselves, and nicely aligning it with their model. But the space is new enough that there is room for banks to enter the space too. The advantages that will come from social networking that aligns with GenY are high stakes. </p></blockquote>
<p>Vancity entered the social web with the right attitude. For them, it&#8217;s about building community. But Colin&#8217;s absolutely right: credit unions don&#8217;t own that notion.</p>
<p>For a Friday laugh, let&#8217;s hope banks and credit unions aren&#8217;t holding social web strategic planning sessions similar to the war room in <a href="http://www.gonzobanker.com/article.aspx?Article=295">this GonzoBanker article</a>! (Thanks, George!)</p>
<p>I believe that social networking <em>does</em> fit the credit union model more nicely than it fits the bank model, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that banks aren&#8217;t itching to enter the space &#8211; or that they couldn&#8217;t be very successful in doing so. The GonzoBanker article might be tongue-in-cheek, but I&#8217;m seriously bracing for a chain reaction of financial institutions blindly building MySpace profiles.</p>
Vancity responds to criticism/2006/08/07/vancity-responds-to-criticism/
Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/08/07/vancity-responds-to-criticism<p>Last week one of Vancity&#8217;s <a href="http://changeeverything.ca">Change Everything</a> participants asked a tough question, and I was itching for a response to appear. The user wrote in a post titled <a href="http://changeeverything.ca/why_am_i_here">Why am I here</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I just discovered this Vancity blog site&#8230;. Hmmmm&#8230;. very nice but why would a financial institution put up a web site for bloggers&#8230;. </p><p>Change &#8211; interesting theme considering people do not want to change, hate change and try to avoid change at all costs. Why does the credit union want me to change?</p></blockquote>
<p>Vancity&#8217;s golden response (called <a href="http://changeeverything.ca/why_we_did_it">Why we did it</a>):</p>
<blockquote><p>You&#8217;re right: banks don&#8217;t have a stake in social networking. But Vancity isn&#8217;t a bank; it&#8217;s a community-based financial institution that is as interested in making our community work as it is in making money. And these days, community is more and more about what happens online, which is why we thought we could play a role in helping use the Net as a tool to support community development in the Lower Mainland and Victoria.</p><p>.... At the end of the day, however, what matters is not our vision for the site&#8212;it&#8217;s what people make of it. So if the site isn&#8217;t working for you as is, let us know what would make it useful to you. Because among the things we&#8217;re changing are the features offered here, and we&#8217;re hoping the site will continue to evolve to meet the community&#8217;s interests and expectations.</p><p>By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I work at Vancity and was one of the people who helped bring this site to life. I look forward to hearing more comments&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>How easy it would&#8217;ve been for William and the rest of Vancity&#8217;s Change Everything team to say, &#8220;Let&#8217;s delete that thread now!&#8221; After all, it brought forth some comments calling it &#8220;time wasted&#8221; and a &#8220;pretty odd marketing attempt.&#8221;</p>
<p>Transparency is a powerful thing, friends. Now those of us following this project have an example of a credit union responding to direct criticism on a blog. Thank you again, Vancity, because you&#8217;re doing <em>everything</em> right with this site.</p>
<p>Vancity, don&#8217;t sweat the negativity. Your community <em>will</em> flourish and you&#8217;ll have a ton of users eager to respond on your behalf.</p>
Congratulations, Mark! (Or are you Mr. Meyer now?)/2006/08/02/congratulations-mark-or-are-you-mr-meyer-now/
Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/08/02/congratulations-mark-or-are-you-mr-meyer-now<p>Today <a href="http://filene.org/blog/post/filene-names-mark-meyer-new-executive-director">Filene announced</a> that Mark Meyer has been chosen to succeed Bob Hoel as the new Executive Director. Bob and Mark are both incredibly intelligent and forward-thinking leaders in the CU industry, and I can&#8217;t think of a better person to step into Bob&#8217;s shoes.</p>
Vancity just changed everything/2006/07/28/vancity-just-changed-everything/
Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/28/vancity-just-changed-everything<p><a href="http://changeeverything.ca/"><img src="/images/legacy/changeeverything.jpg" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a><p><a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/06/06/vancity-credit-union-to-blog">I&#8217;ve been watching for Vancity&#8217;s entry</a> into social media for a while now &#8211; so much so that I feared a letdown. Oh my goodness, I was wrong! Thank you Vancity for launching this project.</p></p>
<p>Without a doubt, it&#8217;s the best example of <em>any</em> financial institution successfully using the social web (blogging, user-generated content, building a true online community). <a href="http://blog.wellsfargo.com/guidedbyhistory/">Wells Fargo</a> should be taking notes along with every credit union <a href="http://cuesskybox.typepad.com/skybox/2006/05/why_dont_credit.html">with a culture open enough</a> to participate in social media with their members.</p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.robcottingham.ca/20060727/ch-ch-ch-ch-change-everything-powered-by-vancity/">Rob Cottingham&#8217;s blog</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Targeted to people living in Vancouver, the Lower Mainland and Victoria, ChangeEverything.ca is a place where people can discuss, plan and make changes. Some of the changes are modest in scope (I want to get my bike out of storage, for instance), but some are a lot more ambitious – scrapping Daylight Savings Time or providing affordable housing for families with kids.</p><p>Users list their changes and blog about them… but that&#8217;s only the beginning. The real fun starts when users join each other&#8217;s changes and start collaborating and communicating. Even though it&#8217;s early days, you can already see the cross-pollination beginning to happen.</p><p>The site ties in with Vancity&#8217;s Change Everything ad campaign, but goes way beyond what you&#8217;d usually think of as marketing. That&#8217;s part of what&#8217;s made it such a joy to work on this project, especially since Vancity really gets the social web. I don&#8217;t know of another financial institution that&#8217;s launched such an open, inclusive online community.</p></blockquote>
<p>Where do I start? <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/tags/changeeverything/">Flickr integration</a>. <a href="http://changeeverything.ca/tourist_attraction_unsightly_blemish_or_a_waste_of_tax_dollars">Members building content to affect change throughout the community</a>. This just scratches the surface. You <em>must</em> visit the site and see for yourself.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s exactly how the brand of a &#8220;credit union&#8221; is supposed to be represented. Efforts like this can change the entire industry/movement/whatever-you-care-to-call-it. And while I&#8217;m on that point, this site says &#8220;<em>movement</em>&#8221; not industry.</p>
<p>Brent just blurted out, &#8220;This is <em>awesome</em>. I signed up for an account.&#8221; Brent is hard to impress. As am I.</p>
Spectacular CU website: Coast Capital Savings/2006/07/22/spectacular-cu-website-coast-capital-savings/
Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/22/spectacular-cu-website-coast-capital-savings<p><a href="https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com"><img src="/images/legacy/Coast_ss.jpg" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /></a>We stumbled upon the new website for a Canadian credit union yesterday. It&#8217;s for <a href="https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/">Coast Capital Savings</a>, and it&#8217;s <em>hands down</em> in the top 1% of credit union sites (and CU marketing in general, for that matter).</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the conversation we had internally yesterday about the site. (Brent didn&#8217;t type his thoughts out, but he was quite impressed. I&#8217;m sure he&#8217;ll leave something in the comments.)</p>
<h3>Matt&#8217;s opinion:</h3>
<p>The more I look at this, the more impressed I am. Take a look at the <a href="https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/Online_Banking/">Online Banking</a> page.</p>
<p>The code is clean, the content is funny:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lines of credit: Be a loan shark to yourself. With a CoastLine personal line of credit attached to your chequing account, you can write yourself a loan anywhere, anytime. Just remember to pay yourself back, because you know where you live.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They even used sifr (font) on their article headlines.</p>
<p>Raises the bar for us a bit, I think.</p>
<h3>Mark&#8217;s opinion:</h3>
<p>Sure &#8230; I&#8217;ll bite &#8230;</p>
<p>Homepage &#8211; Excellent! A https homepage allows direct login to online banking. Very clean seperate areas of focus. Julie kind of freaks me out &#8230; her loop is very evident and she blinks alot &#8230; if you stay on the homepage long enough. I understand the message they are going for &#8230; and at least she’s not wearing a headset :)</p>
<p>Navigation &#8211; Awesome! Top level 1 and 2 with the sidebar coming in if it goes deeper. I like the addition of the sidebar nav on deeper page &#8230; you don&#8217;t need ads there on level 3 &#8230; people are already seeing what they came for &#8230; no need to divert them. Also I like the use of content banners on the main links, and then their removal on deeper pages.</p>
<p>Overall I think the site is good &#8230; just a little on the casual side in most aspects &#8230; colors, fonts, content, ads. It&#8217;s always a hard balance between being personal and professional &#8230; so that sparks some questions in my mind.</p>
<p>Which side is it better to err on a credit union site?</p>
<p>Will being too casual or businessy ever turn people away? Will it ever draw people in?</p>
<h3>My opinion:</h3>
<p>It&#8217;s easy on the eyes, intuitive, and the brand is carried out on every page in both the design and content. By far it&#8217;s the best CU site I&#8217;ve seen.</p>
<p>Great use of cookies for returning visitors with the surprisingly non-annoying Flash girl saying &#8220;Welcome back. Was there something else I could help you with?&#8221; &#8211; right before she broke into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_robot">robot</a> and knitted the Coast Capital logo. It feels weird to say it, but they pulled it off without being cheesy.</p>
<p>And yes, I typed a-dollarsign-dollarsign in the Other Products search box to see what she&#8217;d say. She told me she&#8217;d trace my IP address and call my mother. :)</p>
UMB gets ugly/2006/07/11/umb-gets-ugly/
Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/11/umb-gets-ugly<p><a href="http://americancopywriter.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/promotion_for_s.html"><img src="/images/legacy/lobby.jpg" style="float:right; margin: 4px;" /></a>I was going to add this as a comment to the <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/07/10/five-words-that-kill-your-advertising">last post</a>, but this is incredible enough to get its own spotlight:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.umb.com/"><span class="caps">UMB</span></a>, one of the US&#8217;s largest independent banks, launched a beautifully consumer-driven campaign a little over a month ago. <a href="http://americancopywriter.typepad.com/">American Copywriter</a>, a podcast* and blog by employees of ad agency <a href="http://www.wehatesheep.com/">Sullivan Higdon &#38; Sink</a> explains:</p>
<blockquote>The campaign is called My Ugly Room and it centers on <a href="http://www.myuglyroom.com">myuglyroom.com</a>. At the site, registered users upload photos of their ugly rooms and fill out a profile. Other users vote to give the rooms the &#8220;thumbs down.&#8217; Each week we give a $100 to a random winner from the top ten ugliest rooms. At the end of the contest, the top ten rooms, as chosen by users of the site, will be placed in a drawing for $10,000 to redecorate. Along the way, we give everyone a chance to redecorate now with a little help from <span class="caps">UMB</span>. We&#8217;ve promoted the site in a host of borderless ways, including redecorating some of the bank&#8217;s lobbies with ugly furniture and signage like the <a href="http://americancopywriter.typepad.com/blog/images/lobby.jpg">mock-up you see here</a>.</blockquote>
<p>In addition to this, they have launched <a href="http://myuglyroom.com/blog/">My Ugly Blog</a>, which keeps up with the campaign and its issues, including <a href="http://www.myuglyroom.com/blog/2006/06/ugly-vs-messy-debate.html">The Ugly vs. Messy Debate</a>.</p>
<p>And if all of that isn&#8217;t enough, <span class="caps">UMB</span> is educating with a <a href="https://www.umb.com/AboutUMB/CompanyInformation/Newsletters/FinancialFacts/Podcast/000625">"Basics of a Home Equity Line" podcast</a>.</p>
<p>This is a perfect example of empowering, demonstrating and involving the market to create a meaningful experience.</p>
<p><small>* Probably my favorite podcast of all time.</small></p>
Five words that kill your advertising/2006/07/10/five-words-that-kill-your-advertising/
Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/10/five-words-that-kill-your-advertising<p>Last month, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2006/sb20060607_197154.htm">BusinessWeek ran an article</a> describing the five most worthless words in advertising. Here they are in all their glory:</p>
<ul>
<li>Quality</li>
<li>Service</li>
<li>Value</li>
<li>Integrity</li>
<li>Caring</li>
</ul>
<p>Sound familiar? If you add a stockphoto and a pun, these words represent 80% of credit union advertising.</p>
<p>There are a couple of problems with these words:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>They represent the status quo.</strong> You can&#8217;t build your marketing around the fact that you&#8217;re doing what any business is expected to do. Imagine if I had tried to woo my girlfriend by telling her &#8220;Hi, my name is Brent. I&#8217;ve never murdered anyone, plus sometimes I bathe.&#8221; She would have moved on. Fortunately, I told her I was filthy rich and could bench three times my bodyweight. Perhaps this isn&#8217;t the best example. Let&#8217;s move on.</li>
<li><strong>They have become so overused and tired that your message will instantly slip out of consumer consciousness.</strong> <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&#38;p_id=10076"><span class="caps">A U</span>.S. Department of Labor report on the chemical formalin</a> explains that &#8220;prolonged and repeated contact can cause numbness.&#8221; Mundane advertising has the same side effects.</li>
</ol>
<p>I like the closing paragraph of <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2006/sb20060607_197154.htm">the article</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What you think about your company doesn&#8217;t matter. All that matters is what your customers and prospects think. The next time you&#8217;re tempted to use one of these five words in an ad, stop and ask if there&#8217;s a better way to get the message across. Using common words that have become empty cliches is a shortcut to nowhere. Just because you sell it doesn&#8217;t mean people will buy it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So here&#8217;s a direct question &#8211; <br />
Without using those words, or a facsimile substitute, what makes your credit union (or company/organization) different?</p>
Did we mention Tarrant County Credit Union rocks?/2006/07/07/did-we-mention-tarrant-county-credit-union-rocks/
Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/07/did-we-mention-tarrant-county-credit-union-rocks<p>Remember Tarrant County Credit Union&#8217;s &#8220;Change is Good&#8221; program? It&#8217;s a wild success! In a <a href="http://cues.org/pls/cuesp/!cues1.main?complex_id_in=3069489.3071923.3131330.11397293.page">well-written <span class="caps">CUES</span> Management Magazine article today</a>, Erica Pelzek writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>After the promotion launch April 28, Tarrant County CU signed up 152 &#8220;Change Is Good!&#8221; accounts in less than a month and opened 25 new checking accounts specifically for members who want to participate in the &#8220;Change Is Good!&#8221; program. Tarrant County CU typically opens approximately 20 new checking accounts in a month without the program, according to [CEO Lily] Newfarmer.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not even at month one yet, and the staff is already nearly at the goal,&#8221; Newfarmer says. &#8220;There&#8217;s proof in the numbers.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.tarrantcu.org"><img src="/images/legacy/changeguy.jpg" style="float:right; margin: 4px;" /></a>You know what else is amazing about this product launch?</p>
<ol>
<li>Tarrant County Credit Union moved SO swiftly on this product. They got a request for the offering from a member in February and they went from idea to implementation by the first of May. It wasn&#8217;t a plug-and-play product, either. It was completely new in the credit union industry, and their vendor did an amazing job developing the back-end technology required for the launch.</li>
<li>The product was, like I just mentioned, a <strong>member</strong> request through their website. That&#8217;s collaboration: letting your audience help you improve your product! It didn&#8217;t come from a consultant, a presentation, or a white paper; it originated from a member.</li>
</ol>
<p>Yep &#8211; collaboration is catching on. In an opinion piece in the July 5th issue of <a href="http://www.cutimes.com">Credit Union Times</a>, Guy Messick (attorney at <a href="http://www.cusolaw.com">Messick &#38; Weber P.C.</a>, <span class="caps">NACUSO</span> General Counsel, and <a href="http://www.ciicu.com">CU podcaster</a>) writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are many external threats to the industry (e.g., threat of taxation, diminishing margin spreads, excessive regulation) but the real threat is our inability to respond to the external threats. The credit union model is in deep trouble but the response of most of the industry is to ignore the warning signs and continue to drift toward becoming a marginal industry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Guy goes on to present <strong>collaboration</strong> as a solution to the problem.</p>
<blockquote><p>Work with other credit unions and third party service providers to generate income from additional and valuable services to members. If operational expenses are too high, create scale and efficiencies by collaborating with other credit unions in CUSOs. Credit unions have proven that these strategies work but most credit unions will never give them a chance to work or give them a half-hearted effort that is destined to fail. Why?</p><p>... The majority of the industry is made up of very risk averse people. Change comes very slowly if at all. &#8220;If it worked for fifty years, there is no reason to change things.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>How easy it could&#8217;ve been for Lily to say, &#8220;Well, our vendor doesn&#8217;t offer this and no other credit unions are doing it yet, either.&#8221; Thanks again, <span class="caps">TCCU</span>, for demonstrating that change is indeed good for the credit union industry.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Here&#8217;s part of a great GonzoBanker article posted today, <a href="http://www.gonzobanker.com/article.aspx?Article=290">Giving debit its due credit</a>, discussing how to increase debit transactions and the economics behind it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The [debit loyalty programs] that have gained the most traction are those that are de facto rebate programs. The most discussed is the Bank of America Keep the Change program, where the daily total of debit transactions is rounded up to the next whole dollar and the amount needed for that is transferred to a savings account. B of A matches the amount transferred in the first 90 days and 5% of the amount thereafter, with an annual maximum of $250. The bank gets a lot of additional debit transactions at the $.33 transaction fee at a cost of less than $.05 for the match, and they get a savings account on which they pay .5%. Pretty smart.</p>
</blockquote>
You talking to me?/2006/07/06/you-talking-to-me/
Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/07/06/you-talking-to-me<p><img src="/images/legacy/citi_contextual.gif" style="float:right; border: 2px solid #999999; margin: 4px;" /> <a href="http://www.google.com">Google&#8217;s</a> sponsored links aren&#8217;t anything new. Neither is the integration of contextual advertising into their <a href="http://mail.google.com">Google Mail</a> email service. But I&#8217;ve rarely ever found Gmail&#8217;s contextual ads to be useful (or halfway relevant).</p>
<p>I had to share what I just found in my inbox. If you haven&#8217;t noticed, the ad is for Citi&#8217;s e-Savings. Creepy how it knows my tastes, huh?</p>
<p>This example is nothing compared to what Brent experienced around Christmas last year when he sent an email to his dad asking for gift hints. His dad sent a one-sentence response to the effect of &#8220;whatever you think.&#8221;</p>
<p>Gmail displayed an ad reading something like, &#8220;Left-handed? Check out the left-handed store.&#8221; Brent swears that the email conversation said nothing about his dad being left-handed, <em>which he most certainly is</em>. [Play Twilight Zone theme here.]</p>
<p>Does this have anything to do with credit unions? Not really. I just wanted to share.</p>
The what-if that fuels growth/2006/06/22/the-what-if-that-fuels-growth/
Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/06/22/the-what-if-that-fuels-growth<p><a href="http://cuemployee.blogspot.com">Robbie</a> and I have been talking on his blog about why credit unions don&#8217;t offer high-yield online-only accounts.</p>
<p>Robbie mentions, &#8220;I know many CUs are shying away from such a product because they&#8217;ll have 65 year old members coming in wanting to get 4.75% on their prime share.&#8221;</p>
<p>I hadn&#8217;t thought of it like that. The last thing I even considered was the one or two members complaining about such a good deal being offered. That fear stifles growth.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s counter-intuitive; it says, &#8220;Let&#8217;s be mediocre &#8211; it&#8217;s safer that way.&#8221; (Tip o&#8217; the hat to Kathy Sierra&#8217;s Creating Passionate Users blog and the amazing post <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/death_by_riskav.html">Death by risk aversion</a>).</p>
<p>Robbie brings up a great point &#8211; this is what&#8217;s holding credit unions back! (I know Robbie doesn&#8217;t agree with that argument either. He&#8217;s an innovator!) Yep, Robbie got me thinking, and here&#8217;s what came out:</p>
<blockquote><p>Last week I heard Doug Fecher, Wright-Patt&#8217;s <span class="caps">CEO</span>, speaking about a payday lending program that his credit union offers. When countering arguments about why they shouldn&#8217;t offer the program, he said something to the effect of, &#8220;You can always find a reason not to do something. We looked for reasons to do it anyway.&#8221;</p><p>I hear the &#8220;what if&#8221; argument a lot in credit union land, particularly when CUs throw the idea of blogging around. &#8220;What if someone says something negative about us? What if we say something wrong and get sued?&#8221; No one ever says, &#8220;What if this is a huge success?!&#8221; <span class="caps">IMHO</span> (In my humble opinion), that&#8217;s the &#8220;what if&#8221; that fuels growth.</p></blockquote>
<p>Maybe it&#8217;s the entrepreneur in me; I want to hear more credit unions saying what <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/06/12/hot-topic-serving-members-of-modest-means">Doug Fecher</a>, <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/01/04/consumers-spending-not-saving">Sunmark <span class="caps">FCU</span></a>, <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/06/06/vancity-credit-union-to-blog">VanCity</a> and every other innovator in the credit union space (you know who you are) says: &#8220;What if this is a huge success?!&#8221;</p>
<p>I so want to insert a sound clip here of me screaming: &#8220;Stop being mediocre!&#8221;</p>
More than "just the buck"/2006/06/12/more-than-just-the-buck/
Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/06/12/more-than-just-the-buck<p>I just noticed an article about Bill Strickland on <a href="http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/bill_strickland_on_artists_and_entrepreneurs.php">Signal vs. Noise</a>. The following quote got my attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;At the end of the lecture, students are lined up wanting to work for me,&#8221; Strickland says. &#8220;It&#8217;s startling. I have students coming up with tears in their eyes, saying, &#8216;You are doing what I want to do with my life.&#8217; I say, &#8216;I thought you were in business school because you wanted to run Xerox.&#8217; And they say, &#8216;We&#8217;re here because we wanted to find an opportunity where life could make some sense. You make sense.&#8217; Then I tell them, &#8216;<strong>We&#8217;re going to take all this genius, all your enthusiasm, and see the world as a set of possibilities. This is a new game, and I&#8217;m one of the guys who&#8217;s right in the middle of it. Welcome to the conversation.</strong>&#8217;&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This ties into something that Dan Mica said at the beginning of the general session [at the CUNA conference]. He pointed out that most business &#8220;gurus&#8221; agree that people are being drawn to businesses and groups that believe in something other than &#8220;just the buck.&#8221; Does anybody know that CUs are about more than &#8220;just the buck?&#8221; Are credit unions connecting philosophically with anyone? If not, how do we change that?</p>
Hot Topic: Serving Members of Modest Means/2006/06/12/hot-topic-serving-members-of-modest-means/
Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/06/12/hot-topic-serving-members-of-modest-means<p>We&#8217;re at the [CUNA] conference&#8217;s halfway point, and I&#8217;ve heard more mention of serving members of modest means than any other topic. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s just the <span class="caps">NCUA</span>&#8217;s data collection that&#8217;s fueling the conversation, either.</p>
<p>A larger fight against payday lenders is taking place in many state legislatures, the Hispanic population in the US is growing, and initiatives are gaining momentum within the industry like the <a href="http://www.tcul.coop">Texas Credit Union League&#8217;s</a> Juntos Avenzamos and <a href="http://www.filene.org">Filene&#8217;s</a> REAL Solutions project (disclosure: Filene is a Trabian client).</p>
<p>I bring up Filene because I had the opportunity to sit in on Lois Kitsch&#8217;s presentation today on &#8220;Serving Members of Modest Means.&#8221; Lois is their Director of Field Projects, by the way.</p>
<p>During Lois&#8217;s presentation, combating payday lenders and check cashing outlets was a major theme, as was reaching out to immigrants. She pointed out that the average age of Hispanics in the US is 26 years old (where the average CU member age is around 47), and that Hispanics are largely unbanked. I found it particularly interesting that a quarter of Bank of America&#8217;s new accounts last year were opened by Hispanics.</p>
<p>Also, a good credit union example of what&#8217;s on the horizon in serving members of modest means (including low income consumers, Hispanics and other immigrants, young adults, and people with bad/no credit) comes from <a href="http://www.wright-pattcu.com">Wright-Patt Credit Union</a> and the payday lending <span class="caps">CUSO</span> they&#8217;re about to launch, which was discussed as part of a roundtable session that Lois also led.</p>
<p>Wright-Patt started their program five years ago after a public meeting was held to combat payday lenders in their community. Doug Fecher, Wright-Patt&#8217;s <span class="caps">CEO</span>, spoke of a young woman at this meeting who spoke up on behalf of the payday lenders, saying, &#8220;If you get rid of payday lenders, I&#8217;ll have to go back to the loan sharks.&#8221; When she was asked by the moderator if she could use a credit union instead, she responded, &#8220;They&#8217;re just like the banks. They won&#8217;t make those loans.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ouch. At least there are credit unions who have responded to the challenge, and Wright-Patt is one of them. Wright-Patt and eight other credit unions in the Dayton area are offering a product at a very reasonable 18% <span class="caps">APR</span> (compare that to the 300% <span class="caps">APR</span> and upward that many payday lenders charge), and they&#8217;re launching a <span class="caps">CUSO</span> very soon (in a matter of weeks) to help other credit unions serve their communities with this product, too.</p>
<p>One of Doug&#8217;s best points was this: credit unions started out as payday lenders, and along the way CUs got away from providing that service &#8211; but the need never went away, and predatory for-profit lenders stepped up to fill the void. Speaking philosophically, credit unions should help protect the underserved from predatory lending by going back to offering a better solution. Keep your eyes open for the launch of this <span class="caps">CUSO</span>, and expect to hear a louder buzz in the industry about serving the modest means issue even beyond the release of the <span class="caps">NCUA</span> data later this year.</p>
Best CU article yet on P2P lending in The CEO Report/2006/06/05/best-cu-article-on-p2p-lending-yet-in-the-ceo-report/
Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/06/05/best-cu-article-on-p2p-lending-yet-in-the-ceo-report<p><a href="http://www.zopa.com"><img src="/images/legacy/zopa_logo.gif" class="right" /></a>The <a href="http://www.cuceo.com"><span class="caps">CEO</span> Report</a> is good people. Ben Rogers wrote a killer story on <span class="caps">P2P</span> Lending in this week&#8217;s issue (registration required).</p>
<p>According to the article, <a href="http://www.cuceo.com/cuijsp/article.jsp?article_id=46501">Person-to-person lending: A danger to credit unions or the next big thing?</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p> Whereas Prosper may compete directly with credit unions, U.K.-based Zopa will launch an American system as early as this summer and it hopes to partner directly with credit unions, says Wade Lagrone, VP of U.S. marketing for Zopa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ben and I emailed this morning, and he said, &#8220;Chris Larsen, the Prosper <span class="caps">CEO</span>, said anybody could partner with Prosper, they would just have to do it through Prosper&#8217;s system. Zopa seemed more amenable to co-branding with CUs but – unless everybody sees the light and partners with Zopa – there will still be competition.&#8221;</p>
<p>When I chatted with Ben last week about the story, he asked me if I&#8217;d tried <a href="http://www.prosper.com">Prosper</a> out with my own money. I haven&#8217;t.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m going to wait for <a href="http://www.zopa.com">Zopa&#8217;s</a> U.S. launch. I&#8217;ve followed Zopa in the news and on their own <a href="http://blog.zopa.com">blog</a> for close to a year now, and I can wait a little longer. Doubt I&#8217;ll be able to do it through my credit union, but that&#8217;s another matter. Maybe my CU will be one who &#8220;sees the light&#8221; on this.</p>
S.O.B. - Save Our Bluths, er, Board/2006/05/05/s-o-b-save-our-bluths-er-board/
Fri, 05 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/05/05/s-o-b-save-our-bluths-er-board<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrested_Development"><img src="/images/legacy/finalcountdown.jpg" style="float:right; margin: 4px;" /></a>Thanks to <a href="http://cbruen.com/blog/">Chuck Bruen</a> for pointing us to <a href="http://www.savedfcu.com">www.saveDFCU.com</a>.</p>
<p>The site comes from <span class="caps">DFCU</span> Financial&#8217;s Board of Directors, who are now rallying support to avoid being ousted after an abandoned attempt at conversion to a mutual savings bank.</p>
<p>I suppose it makes sense why the credit union might choose that <span class="caps">URL</span>. After all, the address of the <span class="caps">DFCU</span> Owners United site is <a href="http://www.savemycu.com">www.savemycu.com</a>. The two letter difference between the two URLs, the strikingly similar menu structure and labels (&#8220;Fact vs Fiction&#8221; vs &#8220;Rumor &#38; Truth&#8221;) &#8211; that&#8217;s all complete coincidence, right?</p>
<p>Does anyone else see the irony here? By picking the <span class="caps">URL</span> &#8220;saveDFCU.com&#8221; after seeking to end their credit union existence, now the Board&#8217;s <em>saving</em> DFCU! Yeah, I bet this campaign will smooth things over.</p>
<p>Reminds me of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrested_Development">Arrested Development</a> episode where Michael questions Gob about the new Bluth Company tagline: &#8220;I&#8217;m not so sure how &#8216;solid as a rock&#8217; helps people forget the fact that we built houses in Iraq (pronounced i-<strong>Rock</strong>).&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally, the award for the biggest &#8220;What?!&#8221; goes to the <a href="http://www.savedfcu.com/QandA.html">saveDFCU.com Q&#38;A</a> page:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Q: If the Board is recalled, how will this affect my member ownership.</strong></p><p>A: At this point, we don’t know. If the Board is recalled, they are likely to remove management that has lead this institution to financial prosperity over the last several years. We’ve been told that they want <span class="caps">DFCU</span> Financial to return to its roots in Dearborn, which to us means, closing branches. But you have no real way of knowing what would happen at this point.</p></blockquote>
<p>Oh, and the boogeyman will eat your children. With ketchup.</p>
<p><sup>Footnote about the title of this post: S.O.B. or <a href="http://the-op.com/saveourbluths/">Save Our Bluths</a> was &#8220;a grass-roots campaign by fans of the Emmy-award winning comedy Arrested Development with two goals: to urge Fox to renew Arrested for a third season, and to introduce the innovative comedy to new viewers.&#8221; The third season was indeed made, but the show was dropped from the <span class="caps">FOX</span> lineup and the final <span class="caps">FOX</span> episode aired earlier this year. :(</sup></p>
Revisit: social (p2p) lending/2006/04/14/revisit-social-p2p-lending/
Fri, 14 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/04/14/revisit-social-p2p-lending<p><img src="/images/legacy/zopa_logo.gif" class="right" />It&#8217;s been a couple of months since I wrote about <a href="http://www.prosper.com">Prosper</a> or <a href="http://www.zopa.com">Zopa</a>, and I&#8217;ve got a good reason for a quick revisit. After I responded to a comment on the <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/02/06/social-lending-arrives-in-us">Social lending arrives in US</a> post, I did a quick <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2005-09%2CGGGL%3Aen&#38;q=p2p+lending&#38;btnG=Search">search</a> to dig for any recent developments in this very young space.</p>
<p>From an important <a href="http://www.paymentsnews.com/2006/03/online_banking_.html">Payments News post</a> about an <a href="http://www.onlinebankingreport.com/resources/news_detail.html?eid=30&#38;PHPSESSID=200603280359261356104124">Online Banking Report</a> on Zopa and Prosper:</p>
<blockquote><p>Presuming Prosper and/or Zopa make it through these unique challenges [named in the report], the report predicts that within five years the total market for person-to-person lending in the U.S could surpass 100,000 loans annually, worth more than $1 billion.</p><p>The report is a must-read for any financial services executive involved in consumer credit and loan originations. The consumer behavior seen in this particular niche has broad ramifications even for the most traditional lender.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is the direction in which the web&#8217;s moving, friends. Blogs/RSS; sites like <a href="http://www.myspace.com">myspace</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.kiva.org">Kiva</a>, <a href="http://www.flickr.com">flickr</a> ... the list goes on and on and on. It&#8217;s the social web and expect the shift to carry over into how consumers interact with their financial institutions.</p>
Into the lion's den/2006/03/08/into-the-lions-den/
Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/03/08/into-the-lions-den<p>In a couple of weeks, business is going to take Matt, Trey and me to Salt Lake City, Utah. I mentioned this to my dad, who as the <span class="caps">CEO</span> of <a href="http://www.eccu.net">Energy Capital Credit Union</a>, is very down with credit unions himself.</p>
<p>As a cheerful encouragement, he emailed me a recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/">Wall Street Journal</a> article, entitled &#8220;<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB114170180105191121-lMyQjAxMDE2NDAxODcwMDgxWj.html">Bankers Struggle To Contain Growth Of Credit Unions</a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>The article highlights Salt Lake City as ground zero for credit union vs. bank warfare, and makes me feel like I&#8217;ll need to pack my Brass Knuckles of Credit Union Justice and Bludgeon of Co-op Might in order to be prepared for the worst.</p>
<p>&#8220;Enjoy Salt Lake City,&#8221; my dad said. Here&#8217;s hoping we avoid being bullied by the for-profit riffraff.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 90%"><p>Update &#8211; After reading this post, my dad said, &#8220;wow I made your web but I don&#8217;t understand &#8216;is very down with credit unions himself.&#8217; I consider myself very pro credit union.&#8221; </p>
<p>So, due to an unexpected generational gap in communication, I should explain that &#8220;down with&#8221; is a modern colloquialism for &#8220;in support of.&#8221; So for those of you who were preparing hate-mail for him &#8211; he likes credit unions. He&#8217;s a big fan.</p></span></p>
Ensweiler addresses Austin Chapter of Credit Unions meeting/2006/02/23/ensweiler-addresses-austin-chapter-of-credit-unions-meeting/
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/02/23/ensweiler-addresses-austin-chapter-of-credit-unions-meeting<p>I love a good road trip (especially one that involves a Cracker Barrel breakfast), and yesterday Brent and I left Dallas at the crack of dawn to attend a lunch meeting of the Austin Chapter of Credit Unions.</p>
<p>It was a particularly interesting meeting because <a href="http://www.tcul.coop/TCUL_CEO___Senior_Management.html">Dick Ensweiler</a> was the guest speaker, and his topic was the state of the credit union movement. If you&#8217;re not in the credit union industry, this would be the equivalent of Quincy Jones talking about the state of jazz production, and if you&#8217;re not into jazz it&#8217;s like your grandma talking about the state of warm apple pies.</p>
<p>He didn&#8217;t start off with talk of <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CURIA</span></span>, <span class="caps">GAC</span>, or bank attacks; instead, he spent a good bit of time first discussing the negative savings rate. Particularly he said it&#8217;s imperative that credit union members be informed about the importance of planning for the future &#8211; and that it&#8217;s the responsibility of individual CUs to offer financial education programs.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m aware of some programs that CUs are offering for this, but I won&#8217;t try to guess how effective they are. For example, blogging-superstar <a href="http://www.veritycu.com/verity.cfm?tn=nw3col&amp;menuid=401&amp;navids=158,401&amp;pageid=498">Verity CU</a> partners with <a href="http://www.balancepro.net"><span class="caps">BALANCE</span></a> (owned by Consumer Credit Counseling of San Francisco) to offer their members free telephone and online financial counseling and education.</p>
<p><span class="caps"><span class="caps">BALANCE</span></span> is careful to point out the difference between themselves and the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CCCS</span></span> companies that gave credit counseling a bad name.
<a href="http://www.nasafcu.com/l2.aspx?ci=727"><span class="caps">NASA</span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">FCU</span></span>&#8217;s</a> BALANCE page offers a detailed description, including:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><span class="caps">BALANCE</span> counseling is outcome-oriented &#8211; focusing on the options to help you reach your financial goals. While a debt repayment plan may be an option, it is only recommended when appropriate (about 20% of the time), and is only one of several available choices for getting out of debt.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Because of a few bad eggs in their industry, I raise an eyebrow at anything that says <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CCCS</span></span>. But if <span class="caps"><span class="caps">BALANCE</span></span> is really doing what they say they&#8217;re doing, it sounds like a program worth checking out.</p>
Social lending arrives in US/2006/02/06/social-lending-arrives-in-us/
Mon, 06 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/02/06/social-lending-arrives-in-us<p>From yesterday&#8217;s <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com">TechCrunch</a> post <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/02/05/prosper-launches-social-lending/">Prosper Launches &#8211; Social Lending</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>San Francisco-based <a href="http://www.prosper.com/">Prosper</a> launched today. . . . Like London-based (and <a href="http://www.benchmark.com/portfolio/financial.shtml">Benchmark</a> funded) <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/08/07/profile-zopa/">Zopa</a>, Prosper is a marketplace for borrowers and lenders.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don&#8217;t see a threat to the CU industry? <a href="http://www.prosper.com/public/groups/default.aspx">Look at Prosper&#8217;s near equivalent of SEGs in credit unions</a>.</p>
<p>Also, take a look at <a href="http://www.loanback.com/">LoanBack</a>, whose idea is &#8220;to make it much easier to arrange informal loans&#8212;the kind friends or family might give to each other, for instance,&#8221; according to a post called <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/02/the_web_20_wave_vs_loanback.html">The Web 2.0 Wave vs. LoanBack</a> at <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/">O&#8217;Reilly Radar</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s noteworthy because these are the first live instances of social lending in the US of which we&#8217;ve heard. Scott Patterson predicted it on his blog just a few weeks back in an engaging post called <a href="http://www.creditunions.com/Blog/2006/01/no_soup_for_you_but_what_about_1.html">Zopa for you &#8230; <span class="caps"><span class="caps">P2P</span></span> lending is coming soon</a>, where he writes,</p>
<blockquote><p>Apparently Zopa plans to make a big U.S. splash in the early part of this year. I&#8217;m sure the press will pick up on this and run. They are likely to attract quite an audience and I feel confident they will have at least some initial success.</p><p>However, I&#8217;m unsure about the long term impact on the financial services industry as a whole. What will your credit union&#8217;s response be? Do we need an industry response? Are there additional lessons to be learned from Zopa&#8217;s model that can help us improve our own?</p><p>Overall, I think this should be a wake up call for CUs to leverage their advantages from the banking and for-profit models more effectively. Credit unions have the ability to offer superior rates and service. Who will execute?</p></blockquote>
Is good web design important? You bet./2006/01/17/is-good-web-design-important-you-bet/
Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/01/17/is-good-web-design-important-you-bet<p>As a follow-up to Trey&#8217;s <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2006/01/16/improve-your-credit-union-website-in-10-steps">post on improving your website</a>, one of today&#8217;s most popular stories in the blogosphere is the <a href="http://www.nature.com">Nature</a> article <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060109/full/060109-13.html">Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye</a>. Specifically, a user gets his/her impression of the quality of your site in the first 50 milliseconds of viewing:</p>
<blockquote><p>Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny.</p><p>In the crowded and competitive world of the web, companies hoping to make millions from e-commerce should take notice, the researchers say. &#8220;Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,&#8221; Lindgaard warns.</p></blockquote>
<p>The article also describes what research shows to be the ingredients of a good-looking website.</p>
Improve your Credit Union website in 10 steps/2006/01/16/improve-your-credit-union-website-in-10-steps/
Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/01/16/improve-your-credit-union-website-in-10-steps<p><img src="/images/legacy/oscu011606.gif" class="right" /></p>
<p>Attention All Credit Unions:</p>
<p><em>You&#8217;ve got to improve your web presence in 2006. No excuses.</em></p>
<p>Personally, I didn&#8217;t set foot in any of my credit union&#8217;s branches this year. In fact, if they built a branch at every intersection in Texas, I still wouldn&#8217;t be dropping in. I do, however, visit their website often, so all interaction with my CU occurs online.</p>
<p>If you want to reach me, you&#8217;ve got to do it online. Your outdated site has got to go. It screams unprofessional. Imagine me showing up in your lobby having not bathed or groomed myself in five years.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t wait for a survey to come out to tell you the website needs your immediate attention or for a marketing conference later this year to point it out. Take my word for it.</p>
<p>Begin with this 10-step list. It&#8217;s not a total redesign, but hey, it&#8217;s a start.</p>
<p>1. <strong>Step into your user&#8217;s shoes and make sure the website works for them.</strong>
<ul>
<li>Test your site on several browsers &#8211; including Firefox, Safari, and Opera &#8211; to make sure it works across the board for all users. Go through the site page by page with Firefox, in particular, as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4406204.stm">more than 10% of Internet users are browsing with it</a>. </li>
<li>Change the resolution of your computer monitor to the highest setting allowed (right-click on your desktop and select Properties and then the Settings tab if you&#8217;re using Windows). Many of your site&#8217;s visitors have already moved away from 800&#215;600 screen resolutions. </li>
<li>Take fifteen minutes to invent scenarios that would bring a member to your site. After inventing, find the least technology-savvy person you know to perform those tests starting at the homepage. Watch them closely as they browse. Take notes on what confuses them. Examples include:
<ul>
<li>&#8220;I&#8217;m looking for your savings rates. After I find them, I&#8217;d like to apply for an account.&#8221; </li>
<li>&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to get set up on the online banking tools, but have never done so before. Oh yeah, it&#8217;s during off-hours so I can&#8217;t call your help desk for advice.&#8221;</li>
</ul></li>
</ul></p>
<p>2. <strong>Compare your print marketing pieces (including Annual Reports, credit card designs, billboards, etc.) to the look and feel of your website.</strong> If the styles don&#8217;t match, they should. Sending a consistent brand message is crucial.</p>
<p>3. <strong>If anything on your website (1) blinks off and on or (2) is animated to scroll across the screen from right to left, remove the animation.</strong> That&#8217;s fine for your in-branch <span class="caps"><span class="caps">LED</span></span> displays but it&#8217;s one of the worst things you can do to your website. Why? It distracts from your message, clutters up your site, and is a dated design technique (see example below in 3a). Plus it&#8217;s just plain annoying; it would be like a teller going &#8220;Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!&#8221; inside of a branch.</p>
<p>3a. <strong>The waving American Flag animated <span class="caps"><span class="caps">GIF</span></span> circa 1996 (see below) must go bye-bye.</strong> Using a still image of an American Flag in your marketing materials is fine; it&#8217;s the animated <span class="caps"><span class="caps">GIF</span></span> that isn&#8217;t.</p>
<p><img src="/images/legacy/usaCa.gif" alt="" /></p>
<p>4. <strong>Cut the fluff.</strong> Keep your content as short and sweet as possible.</p>
<p>5. <strong>Don&#8217;t underline anything that&#8217;s not a link.</strong></p>
<p>6. <strong>Teenage members should never be called &#8220;kids.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>7. <strong>If you have a splash page, nix it.</strong> There are no exceptions to this rule. Splash pages do much more harm than requiring an extra click to get to your real content; <a href="http://websearch.about.com/od/designforsearch/ss/tendesigntips_8.htm">they also hurt your search engine rankings</a>.</p>
<p>8. <strong>If your domain is www.samplecu.org, make sure &#8220;samplecu.org&#8221; points to your site as well.</strong> Ask your tech department to make it so.</p>
<p>9. <strong>Never link your users to a <span class="caps"><span class="caps">PDF</span> </span>File without indicating it&#8217;s a <span class="caps"><span class="caps">PDF</span> </span>File.</strong> Also, don&#8217;t make any part of your menu link to a <span class="caps"><span class="caps">PDF</span> </span>File.</p>
<p>10. <strong>Check your site map to see if it matches the actual contents of your site.</strong> Broken links must be fixed immediately.</p>
<p>10a. <strong>Make sure your search tool accurately searches your site.</strong> Try different terms like rates, apply, and join. If you&#8217;re disappointed with the results, just think of the frustration your members feel when searching for those same terms.</p>
Gentile makes great point in CU Times Editor's Column/2006/01/09/gentile-makes-great-point-in-cu-times-editors-column/
Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000/2006/01/09/gentile-makes-great-point-in-cu-times-editors-column<p>In the January 4th edition of <a href="http://www.cutimes.com">Credit Union Times</a>, Editor-in-Chief Paul Gentile argues the &#8220;Timing Couldn&#8217;t Be Better for a Strong Branding Campaign.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>In this era of tight margins, no credit union wants to take on new costs, but isn&#8217;t letting America know what credit unions are all about worth it? And won&#8217;t the new members credit unions attract from it pay for the costs of the campaign many times over? I think so, and I hope credit union leaders start debating this issue in 2006. </p><p>Dairy farmer cooperatives already proved the value of banding together for a national campaign with their successful Got Milk ads. What&#8217;s the credit union equivalent to Got Milk?</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s a great point &#8211; I&#8217;d love to see CUs come up with something with that kind of stickiness.</p>
<p>While we&#8217;re on the topic, <a href="http://www.viewpointbank.com">ViewPoint Bank</a> (which as you all know was formerly Community Credit Union right here in Plano, Texas) just strung up a marketing campaign, which also according to <span class="caps">CU </span>Times &#8220;touts the bank&#8217;s services to perspective customers on the grounds the bank had once been a credit union. On a light background, the three-line message reads in dark lettering: Attention of a credit union. Resources of a bank. (Endless possibilities).&#8221;</p>
<p>If I were less busy right now, I&#8217;d hit the road to find one of the billboards and take a photo.</p>
Trey's Bio/2005/12/14/treys-bio/
Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/12/14/treys-bio<p>Nothing is as likely to bring me a case of the writer&#8217;s block as trying to write my own bio. Every sentence gets second-guessed and I ask myself repeatedly, &#8220;Does anyone care about <em>x</em>?&#8221; and &#8220;Does <em>y</em> sound too pretentious?&#8221;</p>
<p>Writing a bio has been on my project list for months now. In fact, it&#8217;s been unfinished business since we launched Open Source CU over six months ago. We&#8217;ve all realized a blog done right <em>has</em> to provide adequate info about the people writing it.</p>
<p>So here&#8217;s my bio. Brent and Matt will be doing their bios soon. When we make updates to the format of this site over the next few months, these posts are going to turn into bios that we&#8217;d always planned to link to from our Team page.</p>
<h3>Who am I?</h3>
<p>I&#8217;m a native of Louisiana and grew up in a town of less than a thousand residents. I went to a liberal arts college that you&#8217;ve probably never heard of and studied political science and the art of partying. In 2002 I got married and worked for a while in consumer finance and mortgages.</p>
<p>In January 2004 I went out on a limb and left my job with a very large, ahem, bank to join Matt&#8217;s startup, <a href="http://www.trabian.com">Trabian</a>. This involved leaving Louisiana for Texas, and I still thank my wife regularly for her willingness to uproot. Matt and I had met in the mid-1990s at a Future Business Leaders of America conference. Yes, we were in high school in the mid-90s; yes, we were what you might call &#8220;nerds.&#8221; He was, by the way, awarded Mr. Future Business Leader of America, a fact that he probably won&#8217;t include in his own bio, so I will here.</p>
<h3>What did I accomplish in 2005?</h3>
<ol>
<li>Read (and retained) David Allen&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670899240/qid=1134577858/sr=8-4/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-6961966-3003156?n=507846&amp;s=books&amp;v=glance"><em>Getting Things Done</em></a>. Then, bought a labelmaker and some boxes of manila folders, and started keeping a physical inbox. I&#8217;d advise anyone on this planet to do the same.</li>
<li>Spent ten days in Manhattan and worked from wherever I could find wifi.</li>
<li>Found a real passion for credit unions and watched our team turn one credit union client into a dozen. Made Open Source CU a priority, and shared Matt&#8217;s and Brent&#8217;s vision to make this a resource for CUs.</li>
<li>Shifted my work start schedule to very early in the day, and switched from cream and sugar to black coffee.</li>
<li>Was crowned champion of my fantasy baseball league.</li>
</ol>
<h3> What&#8217;s in store for 2006? (Hey, it&#8217;s resolution time again)</h3>
<ol>
<li>I&#8217;ll sharpen my project management skills and continue learning about information architecture &#8211; this will help Trabian continue to grow.</li>
<li>I&#8217;ll keep blogging and will keep doing what I can to help CUs realize the potential blogging holds &#8211; this will help Open Source CU continue to grow.</li>
<li>I&#8217;ll take more Vitamin C and will keep plugging away at <a href="http://www.personalmba.com">The Personal <span class="caps"><span class="caps">MBA</span></span></a> with Matt.</li>
</ol>
Blogging for CUs: What's coming, Why, and How to get involved/2005/11/07/blogging-for-cus-whats-coming-why-and-how-to-get-involved/
Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/11/07/blogging-for-cus-whats-coming-why-and-how-to-get-involved<p>What follows is part of an email conversation I&#8217;ve been having with the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CEO</span></span> of a credit union interested in launching a blog. Some great questions are brought up, and I&#8217;m going to do my best to answer them with this post. I&#8217;ve received permission to use this email to frame a conversation in which I&#8217;m hoping to get others involved.</p>
<blockquote><p>We are in the process of redesigning our web site and I am looking for ways to bring more members to our web site.</p><p>The idea of creating a blog is one that interests me. We are seriously considering including a blog with our new site. I feel that a blog might enable us to reach and communicate with a demographic that we are very interested in. </p><p>As you know there are very few examples of how blogging has been used by credit unions to communicate with their members. How do you see this trend developing? What type of topics should be covered? What topics should be avoided? . . . </p><p>I have an idea of some of the content that seems to make sense but I really don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s acceptable within the &#8220;blogging community&#8221;. My vision for [our] blog would be one that is branded toward the credit union. It would be an outlet for me and possibly select other staff members to get the word out on issues/information that might be useful to our members. I feel like I need to learn more about what makes a blog successful before I commit to launching one.</p></blockquote>
<h3>Blogs vs. Brochure Websites</h3>
<p>Take a look at most traditional websites and you&#8217;ll notice that the content is one-sided and promotional. It&#8217;s shaped to be marketable &#8211; to sell more products and generate more loans, for example, and it&#8217;s written from an insider&#8217;s perspective. Sure, feedback is encouraged through a &#8220;Contact Us&#8221; page, but those comments don&#8217;t often make their way into the public domain.</p>
<p>With a traditional website, visitors usually come already knowing what they&#8217;re looking for before they get there &#8211; they have a purpose in mind, which could be finding out more about what products and services you offer (HELOCs, IRAs, Share Savings Accounts, Online Banking), who you serve (SEGs, communities) and your history among a host of other info.</p>
<p>Because websites are ideal for presenting this type of content, in the short history of the Internet, most websites have functioned as a brochure rather than a conversation.</p>
<p>With a blog, the power to shape your message still exists. After all, you can post on whatever you feel is relevant. But the conversational aspect is what makes a blog so different from a traditional website. Comments, both good and bad, are out there for the whole world to search and see.</p>
<p>If you launch a successful blog, subscribers and regular visitors aren&#8217;t there to see a polished self-promotional message. They visit to hear your distinct voice and to see your personality shine through in your posts. Then, they&#8217;re given the opportunity to interact directly with you &#8211; to let their own voices be heard through comments.</p>
<h3>How do you see this trend developing?</h3>
<p>I&#8217;ll start by quoting from one of my favorite &#8220;techie&#8221; articles of all-time, Wired Magazine&#8217;s piece called <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html">We Are The Web</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>No Web phenomenon is more confounding than blogging. Everything media experts knew about audiences &#8211; and they knew a lot &#8211; confirmed the focus group belief that audiences would never get off their butts and start making their own entertainment. Everyone knew writing and reading were dead; music was too much trouble to make when you could sit back and listen; video production was simply out of reach of amateurs. Blogs and other participant media would never happen, or if they happened they would not draw an audience, or if they drew an audience they would not matter. What a shock, then, to witness the near-instantaneous rise of 50 million blogs, with a new one appearing every two seconds. There &#8211; another new blog! One more person doing what <span class="caps"><span class="caps">AOL</span></span> and <span class="caps"><span class="caps">ABC</span> </span>- and almost everyone else &#8211; expected only <span class="caps"><span class="caps">AOL</span></span> and <span class="caps"><span class="caps">ABC</span></span> to be doing. These user-created channels make no sense economically. Where are the time, energy, and resources coming from? </p><p>The audience.</p><p>I run a blog about cool tools. I write it for my own delight and for the benefit of friends. The Web extends my passion to a far wider group for no extra cost or effort. In this way, my site is part of a vast and growing gift economy, a visible underground of valuable creations &#8211; text, music, film, software, tools, and services &#8211; all given away for free. This gift economy fuels an abundance of choices. It spurs the grateful to reciprocate. It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers. </p></blockquote>
<p>For an even more current perspective on the growth of blogging, you can take a look at David Sifry&#8217;s <a href="http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000343.html">State of the Blogosphere, October 2005</a>. Some of the highlights from this piece include:</p>
<ul>
<li>The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months.</li>
<li>The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago &#8211; and there are no signs of letup in growth.</li>
</ul>
<p>Today&#8217;s consumer holds the power once reserved for the biggest companies in the world &#8211; the power to shape the message themselves. Scary or not, I believe it&#8217;s here to stay, at least for a while.</p>
<p>Remember when email just hit the mainstream? The first time you set up Outlook and got a new message from a collegue &#8230; Or when you heard about online banking for the first time &#8230; Who would&#8217;ve guessed the Internet would come so far just ten years ago?</p>
<p>I see blogging, like the author of the Wired piece, as indicative of the Culture of Participation that&#8217;s forming right before our eyes. It&#8217;s a culture that&#8217;s beating traditional news outlets to breaking stories (forcing those outlets to blog themselves!). It&#8217;s also a culture that&#8217;s numb to traditional marketing &#8211; skipping through commercials with TiVo and rendering pop-up Internet ads and spam email powerless.</p>
<p>The culture of participation is even hitting the credit union/banking industry &#8211; not just in blogs, but in peer-to-peer lending. It started with a British company called <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2005/08/16/online-money-exchange-zopa-making-headlines">Zopa</a>, where people who are willing to invest become lenders and can choose to lend to riskier borrowers at higher rates or to more qualified borrowers at lower rates. Borrowers then browse available rates, and if there&#8217;s an agreement a loan is made.</p>
<p>A few days ago, I noticed a blog post about a <a href="http://www.robcottingham.ca/20051021/now-thats-what-i-call-social-capital/">Canadian credit union offering peer-to-peer lending</a>. That post cites <a href="https://www.vancity.com/MyBusiness/ProductsandServices/Borrowing/Loans/CommunityBusinessLoans/PeerLending/FAQ/">Vancity Credit Union’s <span class="caps"><span class="caps">FAQ</span></span> page</a>, which reads:</p>
<blockquote><p>Group members approve each other&#8217;s loan requests and are collectively accountable for repaying the loans of all members within the group.</p><p>The group meets regularly, at least monthly, to support each other, to share each other&#8217;s success, to refer customers and to solve business problems. . . .</p><p>Initial loans, known as Level One, are for $1,000. Subsequent loan amounts increase to a maximum of $5,000. For Self-Employment Program graduates the first loan level is $2,000, subject to the completion of a business plan and support of self-employment benefits.</p><p>Terms range from 3 months to 24 months and interest rates are based on prime plus 3%.</p></blockquote>
<p>I bring this up because without the Culture of Participation fueled by the Internet, this conversation couldn&#8217;t exist. To borrow from Malcolm Gladwell, the Culture of Participation (and blogging in general) has reached a tipping point.</p>
<p>Because the blogosphere is so open by its nature, it&#8217;s surprising to see which major companies have opened themselves up to it! <a href="http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/">General Motors</a>, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/publiceye/main500486.shtml"><span class="caps">CBS</span> News</a>, the Dallas Cowboys through <a href="http://roger.staubach.com/">Roger Staubach&#8217;s blog</a>, and even <a href="http://www.walmartfacts.com/stories/">Wal-Mart</a>, just to name a few.</p>
<p>To me, nothing better illustrates blogging&#8217;s staying power than <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2005/06/27/rss-and-microsoft-windows">Microsoft including <span class="caps"><span class="caps">RSS</span></span></a> (Really Simple Syndication) capabilities into their upcoming Windows release. With <span class="caps"><span class="caps">RSS</span></span>, people who are interested in your new posts don&#8217;t have to visit your blog to see your latest piece.</p>
<p><span class="caps"><span class="caps">IMHO</span> </span>(blogspeak for &#8220;In My Humble Opinion&#8221;), the question with blogging isn&#8217;t, &#8220;Is this a fad?&#8221; Now the issue is &#8220;it&#8217;s time to catch up.&#8221;</p>
<h3>What type of topics should be covered?</h3>
<p>Since blogging hasn&#8217;t been used by many credit unions as of yet, I can only speak hypothetically about things I&#8217;d cover if I were in your shoes.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Write about changes to product and service offerings, and cover them before those changes are made.</strong> If we were considering moving an <span class="caps"><span class="caps">ATM</span></span> machine, I&#8217;d post. If we were thinking about offering business lending, I&#8217;d post. If we were about to go through a rebranding, I&#8217;d post. That sort of thing. If it&#8217;s any topic on which you&#8217;d be willing to accept feedback, posting about it can get the conversation started.</li>
<li><strong>Highlight extraordinary member service stories</strong> &#8211; examples of how your staff made a member&#8217;s day. </li>
<li><strong>Post on member security issues</strong> &#8211; phishing, for example.</li>
<li><strong>Start off by being open about why you&#8217;re launching a blog in the first place.</strong> That could mean saying, &#8220;We want to reach out in a different way to people who need our services but may not be aware of what makes credit unions so unique.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
<p>Whatever you post on, be honest, and be honestly you. In fact, it&#8217;s a good idea to read it aloud before hitting submit to make sure you sound like you. As Laura Enock said in a recent <a href="http://www.cues.org/pls/cuesp/!cues1.main?section_id_in=3069489&amp;top_category_id_in=3071923&amp;this_object_id_in=11258216&amp;this_object_type_in=page&amp;this_parent_category_id_in=3072751&amp;proc_this_object_type_in=page&amp;proc_this_parent_category_id_in=3072751&amp;proc_this_object_id_in=11258216&amp;proc_top_category_id_in=&amp;proc_to_call_in=cues1.mgmt_mag_template&amp;proc_param1=y&amp;proc_param2=n"><span class="caps">CUES</span> Management Magazine article on blogging</a>, &#8220;You have to post in your own voice so it&#8217;s real,&#8221; she says. &#8220;You have to let it all out there, because people are sensitive to B.S. and they can pick through it pretty easily. From what I see on other blogs, I can tell when someone is just throwing out marketing lines.&#8221;</p>
<h3>What topics should be avoided?</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Don&#8217;t target your competitors.</strong> Talking about what makes a credit union better than a bank is fine, but you don&#8217;t need to bash specific competitors, unless you&#8217;re ready for them to see that post and comment on it. One reason: they&#8217;ll find it when they search for their own name through any number of blog search sites, like <a href="http://blogsearch.google.com">Google Blogsearch</a> or <a href="http://blogs.icerocket.com">Icerocket</a>. </li>
<li><strong>Avoid discussions about politics and religion.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Just use common sense.</strong> If you&#8217;re about to make a post and you&#8217;re thinking, &#8220;I wonder if we could get in trouble over this,&#8221; either don&#8217;t post about it or run it by your lawyer first. It would probably be a good idea to have him/her draft a statement like: &#8220;The opinions expressed on this blog are &#8230;&#8221;, then include it at the bottom of each page.</li>
</ul>
<h3> In conclusion &#8230;</h3>
<p>Blogging isn&#8217;t for everybody. You&#8217;ve got to start out with the commitment to keep it current. Expect to make a lot of posts first without getting many comments in return. The good news is if it doesn&#8217;t work out, you can always make a final post that says, &#8220;We&#8217;re through with our blog experiment. It didn&#8217;t work. You can&#8217;t blame us for trying!&#8221;</p>
<p>Before you start, subscribe to other blogs first &#8211; even leave some comments just to get the feel of it. Google now has a free <span class="caps"><span class="caps">RSS</span></span> reader that you can try out at http://reader.google.com (it still has some little bugs, but hey it&#8217;s free).</p>
<p>Posting regularly is important. It doesn&#8217;t have to be everyday, but it&#8217;s a good idea to post at least weekly. Remember to link to other blogs in your posts. If you see a good idea on another blog, quote from it and discuss it. Just think of it in the same way you did a college paper &#8211; you&#8217;ve got to cite, cite, cite!</p>
<p>If you possess the patience to build up a reader base, you&#8217;ll find blogging is a great way to:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.changethis.com/1.CustomerEvangelist">Build customer (or in CU-speak, member) evangelists</a>.</li>
<li>Reach out to your target demographic and build credibility with them.</li>
<li>Let people get to know the real you.</li>
</ul></p>
Interest-Only not in CU members' best interests/2005/10/12/interest-only-not-in-cu-members-best-interests/
Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/10/12/interest-only-not-in-cu-members-best-interests<p>From today&#8217;s online version of <a href="http://www.cujournal.com">The Credit Union Journal</a> &#8211; The article&#8217;s title is <em><span class="caps">NCUA</span>&#8217;s Johnson Warns On Lowering Standards In Mortgage Lending</em> and it cites:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[According to <span class="caps"><span class="caps">NCUA</span> </span>Chairman JoAnn Johnson,] &#8220;In California, in the first six months of 2005, interest-only loans accounted for 61% of mortgage loans. In 2002, only 2% of mortgage loans were interest-only. That is a cause for alarm.&#8221; Johnson noted credit unions originate just 1.95% of all U.S. mortgage loans, but that growth cannot come at the expense of safety and soundness.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>61% of mortgages made in California this year were interest-only?! Whoa. That is one scary stat.</p>
<p>So, what should credit unions do when offering an interest-only mortgage product? Is it simply a case of <del>buyer</del> member beware? <span class="caps"><span class="caps">IMHO</span></span>, it shouldn&#8217;t be.</p>
Jamaica Trip Photos/2005/10/05/jamaica-trip-photos/
Wed, 05 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/10/05/jamaica-trip-photos<p>I&#8217;ve uploaded a gallery with some of the photos from the Jamaica trip. You can take a look at them <a href="http://opensourcecu.com/jamaica/index.html"><span class="caps">HERE</span></a>.</p>
<p>Thanks to Carl Grant, <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CEO</span></span> of Kirkvine CU, for the photos he sent my way.</p>
<p>*UPDATE: I&#8217;ve uploaded a short video clip (~30 seconds) of Janet, a Kirkvine CU employee, getting down in the name of Jamaican culture and heritage.</p>
<p>Click the picture below to check it out (8 MB):</p>
<center><a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com/jamaica/song-and-dance.avi"><img src="http://opensourcecu.com/jamaica/videothumb.jpg" /></a></center>
"One Love, One Heart, One Brand" (Jamaica Trip pt. III)/2005/10/04/one-love-one-heart-one-brand-jamaica-trip-pt-iii/
Tue, 04 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/10/04/one-love-one-heart-one-brand-jamaica-trip-pt-iii<p>This is my final post on the Jamaican Credit Union Movement. Rather than fill it up with my own thoughts, I&#8217;m going to give you just a little background. Then I&#8217;d like to hear your opinions.</p>
<p><strong>One Unified Brand</strong></p>
<p>Currently, the vast majority of credit unions in Jamaica (all except for one, as far as I know) fall under one all-encompassing brand, which is the brand of the Jamaican Co-operative Credit Union League. Not a single credit union (again, except for one, which I&#8217;ll discuss shortly) has its own logo, each uses that of the <a href="http://www.woccu.org/">World Council of Credit Unions</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, a large portion of Jamaican credit unions&#8217; marketing is produced by the League. Much of the exact same promotional materials can be found in the lobbies of credit unions nationwide. This gives many credit unions access to marketing they wouldn&#8217;t otherwise have.</p>
<p>Because of this, said <span class="caps"><span class="caps">JCCUL</span> </span>President Glen Francis, Jamaican credit union members seem to think all credit unions are the same credit union. Their credit union. It is not uncommon for people to mistake any given credit union as just another branch of their own. As you can imagine, this can get confusing.</p>
<p><strong>The Exception</strong></p>
<p>The one credit union who has decided to move forward with its own brand is <a href="http://cokcu.com/">City of Kingston Credit Union</a>. At over 100,000 members, they are by far the largest credit union in Jamaica. They produced their own logo and develop their own marketing, which includes radio and television promotions.</p>
<p>However, <span class="caps"><span class="caps">COK</span></span>&#8217;s branding efforts may be working too well. Apparently now Jamaicans think all credit unions are <span class="caps"><span class="caps">COK</span></span>.</p>
<p><strong>Get Out Your Number Two Pencils</strong></p>
<p>Obviously there are benefits to a large-scale credit union brand. It brings strength to the Jamaican Movement as a whole, and gives ability and larger presence to those credit unions who wouldn&#8217;t otherwise have the resources.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, are credit unions missing out on a strong opportunity for localized passion and niche marketing by not engaging in individual brand strategy? <span class="caps"><span class="caps">COK</span> </span>Credit Union decided to brand itself, and the implications have been enormous.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m really not sure what the right answer is. I would, however, love to hear your thoughts.</p>
<p>Tomorrow I&#8217;ll be putting up pictures. And one very special video clip.</p>
Keep the Change promo from BofA/2005/09/28/keep-the-change-promo-from-bofa/
Wed, 28 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/09/28/keep-the-change-promo-from-bofa<p>In the car with Matt yesterday we heard a great <a href="http://www.bankofamerica.com">Bank of America</a> commercial on the radio. It didn&#8217;t grab our attention because it was funny, shocking, or trendy in any way. It was simply straight talk, and it was probably the most effective financial services ad I&#8217;ve ever heard.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re starting a program called &#8220;Keep the Change&#8221; (I believe; I couldn&#8217;t find <em>anything</em> about it on their website or through Google search, Google blogsearch, etc.).</p>
<p>From what we gathered from the commercial, enrolling in the program allows any purchase made with a BofA debit card to have the purchase amount rounded up to the next dollar. The leftover &#8220;change&#8221; is then automatically deposited into a savings account.</p>
<p>For example, if I spend $2.35 at a convenience store using my debit card (&#8220;my&#8221; doesn&#8217;t really apply; I&#8217;m not a BofA customer), $3.00 is debited from my checking account, $2.35 is paid to the store, and $.65 goes into my savings account.</p>
<p>What a perfect way to advocate financial health!</p>
<p>I hope I hear of some credit unions doing something along these lines soon. It sounds like a really innovative way to allow someone to build up a savings account without even noticing!</p>
"Get Up, Stand Up" (Jamaica Trip pt. II)/2005/09/21/get-up-stand-up-jamaica-trip-pt-ii/
Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/09/21/get-up-stand-up-jamaica-trip-pt-ii<p>I apologize for the delay between this post and the previous. I left town again, but now perhaps to the disappointment of the Greater Dallas Area, I&#8217;m here to stay.</p>
<p><strong>Quick Recap</strong></p>
<p>Thanks in large part to a recent partnership between the Texas Credit Union League and the Jamaican Credit Union League (and specifically a partnership between Energy Capital Credit Union and Kirkvine Co-operative Credit Union), I had the opportunity to travel to Jamaica for a week, visit several of its credit unions, and meet with the president of the League, Mr. Glen Francis.</p>
<p>My previous post discussed the unity of the Jamaican culture, and specifically how unity and great economic need have translated into a powerful national Credit Union Movement. Fifty percent of all Jamaican adults are credit union members. That&#8217;s half, for those of you reaching for your calculators.</p>
<p><strong>Stifling the Movement</strong></p>
<p>The Movement, however powerful and however important to the people&#8217;s economic welfare, is not without its share of struggles. In 1999, Jamaican credit unions were designated as &#8220;specified financial institutions&#8221; by the government. What exactly does that mean?</p>
<p>It means credit unions could end up being no different than any number of commercial banks across the nation. It means they could lose their abilities that have made them such an empowering force for the people. <a href="http://www.boj.org.jm/">The Bank of Jamaica</a> is their new boss, and is continuing to try and &#8220;level the playing field,&#8221; which translates into less ability to help those who really need it.</p>
<p>New regulations could put a cap on what credit unions can do for the sake of low-income members. Those for whom credit unions are a saving grace will have nowhere to go.</p>
<p>Remember in the last post when I mentioned the guy who made $400/month? Given some of these potential regulatory changes, his options (and those of many like him) will quickly evaporate.</p>
<p><strong>Close to Home</strong></p>
<p>This issue strikes a chord here at home, too. For years, banks have been lobbying for credit union taxation, in their own attempt to &#8220;level the playing field.&#8221; Bank employees in Utah have been given time off to lobby against credit unions (<a href="http://www.cuna.org/press/newswatch.html">Credit Union Newswatch</a> 18 Feb 2003). Michigan banks sent toy ducks to all of the Michigan U.S. House members in an attempt to say &#8220;if it walks like a duck&#8230;&#8221; (read more about that <a href="http://mcul.cusiteonline.com/news/contact/cover_story.php">here</a>). On several occasions, credit union grassroots lobbyists have rallied in Washington D.C. in opposition to banks to retain current credit union standards.</p>
<p>The point is this: although credit unions resemble banks in many ways, they are a very different kind of institution. They cannot be treated and regulated in the same ways.</p>
<p><strong>Fanning the Flames</strong></p>
<p>Fortunately, at this point all of those high-stakes regulations are only in speculation mode, giving Jamaican credit unions some time to rally their troops. And this Movement certainly has troops.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have members who are ready to go march,&#8221; said Cynthia Briscoe, General Manager of Manchester Parish Co-operative Credit Union.</p>
<p>The key to fighting this successfully is going to be reinforcing the passion Jamaican citizens have for their credit unions. No matter what financial changes are made, the credit union will always be the financial instition for the people and by the people.</p>
<p>Niche marketing and establishing a strong brand to play avatar to that emotional connection are going to be crucial. In my next and final post on this topic, I&#8217;ll discuss some of the branding strategies the Jamaican League has implemented as a whole, and how one credit union in particular has taken their credit union brand to the next level.</p>
"Out of many, one people" (Jamaican Trip pt. I)/2005/09/13/out-of-many-one-people-jamaican-trip-pt-i/
Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/09/13/out-of-many-one-people-jamaican-trip-pt-i<p>It breaks my heart to say it, but I&#8217;m back in the States. Goodbye fresh fruit and accommodating people at every turn, hello guy-honking-as-soon-as-the-traffic-light-turns-green and 49-cent hotdogs in my freezer.</p>
<p>From the very beginning, Carl Grant (our host, and <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CEO</span></span> of Kirkvine <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CCU</span></span>, as previously mentioned) made it very clear that we were to see the &#8220;Real Jamaica.&#8221; During this trip, the real Jamaica included, but was not limited to:
<ul>
<li>Roadside fruit stands, each featuring fruit I had never previously heard of, much less tried.</li>
<li>A southern fishing village with the best restaurant in the entire world.</li>
<li>A naked guy walking down the road.</li>
<li>A nation-wide protest by Jamaican Labor Party activists.</li>
<li>Roadside fruit trees, each featuring fruit I had never previously heard of, much less tried.</li>
<li>Some of the most action-packed driving to grace God&#8217;s earth.</li>
<li>Cops armed with M-16s.</li>
<li>The Jamaican dialect <em>potwah</em>, in which I can now say, &#8220;Wi da-ance till wi foot batam bun wi.&#8221;</li>
<li>Reggae music on the radio all the time, which is my dream come true.</li>
</ul></p>
<p>One of the most striking ingredients of the Jamaican culture, an ingredient our American culture could use more of, is the powerful unification by an unspoken common bond. By &#8220;powerful unification&#8221; I don&#8217;t mean everybody there has a bumper sticker with the Jamaican flag on it. During my stay, I saw the socio-economic lines that affect our interactions so much in the States vanish. The classes are there, very defined upper and lower economic classes. However, conversation seems to flow seamlessly from one class to the next. No one treats the next guy, rich or poor, like he&#8217;s anything other than the next guy.</p>
<p><strong>The Movement</strong></p>
<p>Jamaica&#8217;s motto is &#8220;Out of many, one people.&#8221; It&#8217;s perhaps this gestalt-driven perspective that has lead half of all Jamaican adults to join credit unions. For the duration of the trip, I never once heard a local referring to the &#8220;Credit Union Industry.&#8221; Inspirationally, Jamaican credit unions refer to their faction as the &#8220;Credit Union Movement.&#8221; It begins to sound less like a financial institution and more like an uprising. And in many ways it is.</p>
<p>Cooperative institutions, especially credit unions, are imperative to the country&#8217;s economy and to the welfare of the people. Unemployment in Jamaica is officially around 15% (some have said its more like 25%), and a large portion of the employed still fall well below the poverty line. On top of this, taxes are much higher, and so is the overall cost of living.</p>
<p>To put a little more perspective on this, Manchester Co-operative Credit Union, a community credit union with 40,000 members, has around $16.5 million in assets. Dallas Credit Union, one of Trabian&#8217;s clients, is a community credit union with 5,500 members and around $30 million in assets.</p>
<p>At one credit union we visited, a man who made $400 per month was applying for a loan. Is there any chance a guy like that could get a loan at a commercial bank? Absolutely not. The President of Manchester Co-operative Credit Union told us that an extremely large portion of their membership comes to them because other institutions won&#8217;t even consider them for loans, and they know the credit union will take care of them.</p>
<p><strong>The League</strong></p>
<p>The unification even goes beyond that of members into credit unions. The credit unions of Jamaica are all unified under the umbrella of the Jamaican Co-operative Credit Union League (JCCUL), whose General Manager, Mr. Glen Francis, was kind enough to meet with us at their Kingston headquarters.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps"><span class="caps">JCCUL</span></span> has the responsibility of handling all Jamaican credit unions&#8217; regulations, liquidity needs, support, standards, training and even marketing materials, effectively making it the Jamaican equivalent of the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">NCUA</span></span>, Corporate Central Credit Union, and the individual credit union leagues. This centralized leadership has translated into Jamaican credit unions being viewed by the nation more as one large entity, as opposed to a cluster of individual institutions. Each credit union displays the World Council of Credit Unions logo as its own, the only credit union to steer away from that is <span class="caps"><span class="caps">COK</span> </span>(City of Kingston) Credit Union, a mammoth of 100,000 members. As you can imagine, a common brand for all Jamaican credit unions has both its ups and downs. More on that later.</p>
<p><strong><span class="caps">QNET</span></strong></p>
<p>The <span class="caps"><span class="caps">JCCUL</span></span> is in the process of implementing a new tool that will make collaboration between credit unions even simpler. The tool is called <span class="caps">QNET</span> which stands for &#8220;Quality Network Co-operative Limited.&#8221; The <span class="caps"><span class="caps">QNET</span></span> will include nationally-synced tools for that include, but again are not limited to:
<ul>
<li>data storage </li>
<li>online and telephone banking </li>
<li><span class="caps"><span class="caps">ATM</span></span> networking</li>
<li>customer relationship management</li>
<li>point-of-sale networking</li>
<li>online real-time transactions</li>
</ul></p>
<p>Once this tool is in place it should help Jamaican credit unions to reach an even higher level of synergy. Kirkvine <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CCU</span></span> is expecting to be plugged into the system around January, with others soon to follow.</p>
<p><strong>Coming up</strong></p>
<p>The Jamaican Credit Union Movement is continuing to push and grow by leaps and bounds. But at the same time, the Movement is hitting its fair share of worrisome issues, from new government regulations on the horizon to problems in member communication. In the next post, I&#8217;ll be discussing some of these issues, and the serious consequences they could have on the Movement&#8217;s development.</p>
Jamaican Credit Union Tour '05/2005/09/06/jamaican-credit-union-tour-05/
Tue, 06 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/09/06/jamaican-credit-union-tour-05<p>Because of <del>a perfect mix of eloquence, snappy dressing, cat-like dance moves, my ability to speak five languages fluently, cunning, a flawless butterfly stroke,</del> amazing luck, and the kindness of others, I am currently in the gorgeous mountain-top town of Mandeville, Jamaica.</p>
<p>My host is Carl Grant, <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CEO</span></span> of Manchester&#8217;s Kirkvine Cooperative Credit Union, who has been great enough to allow to me and my dad to come and visit his credit union and several others in Jamaica. Carl is not only a great guy, but also a visionary who has a reputation for being one of the most progressive credit union executives in Jamaica. And on top of that, he&#8217;s letting us stay at his home with his family, and engorging us on amazing Jamaican cuisine at least thrice daily.</p>
<p>&#8220;I promise you, you will gain ten pounds while you are here,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Tomorrow we visit the Jamaican Cooperative and Credit Union League, by the end of the week will have covered the entire width of the island, from occidental to oriental. Stay tuned for more on parishes, cooperatives, and jerks (the seasoning, not the temperament).</p>
Letter to my Credit Union:/2005/08/31/letter-to-my-credit-union/
Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/08/31/letter-to-my-credit-union<p>Dear Trey&#8217;s Credit Union,</p>
<p>Today I got a letter from you. You told me you had important information about my account (see envelope). You lied.</p>
<p><img title="Envelope from my CU" src="/images/legacy/envelope_lie.jpg" alt="Envelope from my CU" /></p>
<p>I may never trust another piece of correspondence you send my way. If you would&#8217;ve just told me, &#8220;Trey, we think this product may be good for you,&#8221; I&#8217;d have looked. But your letter had nothing to do with my account at all.</p>
<p>Instead of being square with me, you used a tactic that I&#8217;d expect from a credit card company, not my credit union.</p>
<p>Save the words &#8220;Important information about your account&#8221; for something more &#8230; well, important.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Trey</p>
Housing bubble?/2005/08/24/housing-bubble/
Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/08/24/housing-bubble<p>On Monday, a Business2.0 blog post (<a href="http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2005/08/scary_housing_b.html">Scary Housing Bubble Graph</a>) pointed to a compelling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com">NY Times</a> article (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/business/yourmoney/21real.html">Be Warned: Mr. Bubble&#8217;s Worried Again</a>). The article profiles an economist who predicts the following about today&#8217;s housing market:</p>
<blockquote><p>Today, nine years after his lunch with Mr. Greenspan and five years after the markets finally did crash, Mr. Shiller is sounding the same warning for real estate that he did for stocks. In speeches, in television and radio interviews and in a second edition of his prophetic 2000 book, &#8220;Irrational Exuberance,&#8221; he is arguing that the housing craze is another bubble destined to end badly, just as every other real-estate boom on record has.</p>
<p>These, in short, are his second 15 minutes of gloom. He predicts that prices could fall 40 percent in inflation-adjusted terms over the next generation and that the end of the bubble will probably cause a recession at some point. </p></blockquote>
<p>Then I saw <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/072305dnbusmba.a0e653dc.html">Mortgage banks dispell housing bubble notion</a> come across my <span class="caps"><span class="caps">RSS</span></span> feed from the Dallas Morning News. <a href="http://www.cutimes.com">Credit Union Times</a> also picked up the story in today&#8217;s email version, giving it a better-fitting headline &#8211; &#8220;Housing Bubble? <span class="caps">MBA</span> Advises Caution, Not Panic.&#8221; (By the way, dispell&#8217;s correct spelling is actually <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dispel">dispel</a> &#8211; so someone misspelled dispel. Clever, eh?)</p>
<p>If the bubble bursts (just talking worst-case scenario here), what actions should a credit union take? Is there a responsibility on the part of credit unions to warn/educate members if the economic indicators signal the worst-case scenario is inevitable?</p>
Online money exchange Zopa making headlines/2005/08/16/online-money-exchange-zopa-making-headlines/
Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/08/16/online-money-exchange-zopa-making-headlines<blockquote>
<p>&#8220;It is where eBay meets credit unions by way of easyJet, the peer-to-peer movement and Betfair.&#8221; (From <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,,1435623,00.html">Peer Pressure</a>, The Guardian, March 11, 2005)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meet <a href="http://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/">Zopa</a>, the company profiled in <a href="http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1085242,00.html">Peer-to-Peer Banking</a> in <a href="http://www.business2.com">Business 2.0</a> magazine. Service is available to UK residents over 18. Their <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CEO</span></span>, Richard Duvall, is &#8220;now eyeing the US market. But analysts say federal and state regulations could present obstacles.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>How it works:</strong></p>
<p>According to their website, people who are willing to invest become Zopa lenders and can choose to lend to riskier borrowers at higher rates or to more qualified borrowers at lower rates. Borrowers then browse available rates, and if there&#8217;s an agreement a loan is made. <span class="caps"><span class="caps">ZOPA</span></span>, by the way, stands for &#8220;Zone of Possible Agreement and is the overlap between one person&#8217;s bottom line (the lowest they&#8217;re prepared to get for something) and another person&#8217;s top line (the most they&#8217;re prepared to give for something).&#8221;</p>
<p>Zopa divides lenders&#8217; offers up and distributes them around at least fifty potential borrowers. Zopa then manages the payment collection process and charges borrowers a 1% exchange fee.</p>
<p><strong>How Zopa shapes their message: </strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zopa is for creditworthy people who earn money in new ways, in ways that banks don&#8217;t always recognise. People who are self employed, people who have peaks and troughs to their income, people who would be invisible to a bank&#8217;s credit rating system but are seen and validated by Zopa&#8217;s. (From <a href="http://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/">www.zopa.com</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea of &#8220;peer-to-peer banking&#8221; was directly behind the birth of the credit union movement. Today for-profit Zopa has discovered that same message still appeals to the masses &#8211; over 10,000 people have joined Zopa since their website launched in March 2005.</p>
Godin: Clueless about customer experience?/2005/08/16/godin-clueless-about-customer-experience/
Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/08/16/godin-clueless-about-customer-experience<p>Seth Godin reminds us in his <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/08/clueless.html">Clueless</a> post that if your marketing is spectacular but your customer/member experience isn&#8217;t, you just don&#8217;t get it.</p>
<blockquote><p>Then, this morning, I head to the bank. Poor guy is arguing with the &#8220;customer service manager&#8221;. The problem? He had $4 in his checking account as he was waiting to close it. The bank charged him a monthly $5 service fee. The fee bounced. Then they charged him $30 for bouncing the fee on an inactive account.</p>
<p>The manager was trying to explain the policy, but the bottom line is that all the real estate, all the ads, all the marble, all the computers&#8230; all wasted&#8230; because they were enraging the guy. Over $4.</p>
<p>And finally, leaving the bank, I saw the most amazing interaction (yes, this is true.) A woman is first in line. She&#8217;s withdrawing $1,000 from her account. The teller pushes away from the desk and goes and gets her signature card (this is a neighborhood bank) to match it against the woman&#8217;s signature on the withdrawal slip. </p>
<p>The customer tells me that: <ol><li>the teller has been working there for twenty years.</li><li>the customer comes in at least once a week.</li><li>they always check her signature</li></ol>
and, ready for this&#8230; she&#8217;s been a customer at this bank for seventy years. I am not making this up. She is very proud that she&#8217;s nearly (nearly!) their longest-serving customer. The account is more than seventy years old. And they check her signature.</p></blockquote>
<p>Banks are notorious for not getting the &#8220;customer experience&#8221; part right; many credit unions excel at the &#8220;member experience&#8221; part but, arguably, not the marketing part.</p>
Educating members about phishing/2005/07/25/educating-members-about-phishing/
Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/07/25/educating-members-about-phishing<p>According to a report on <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/161/report_display.asp">Public Awareness of Internet Terms</a> from the <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org">Pew Internet &amp; American Life Project</a>, &#8220;the average American internet user is not sure what podcasting is, what an <span class="caps"><span class="caps">RSS</span></span> feed does, or what the term &#8216;phishing&#8217; means.&#8221; In fact, less than 30% of internet users have a good idea of the definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing">phishing</a>.</p>
<p>Not knowing the meaning of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting">podcasting</a> is certainly excusable. Not knowing the meaning of phishing, however, <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/talkback/071905.html">cost 1.2 million U.S. computer users $929 million between May 2004 and May 2005</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s no secret that phishers are increasingly hijacking credit union brands, <a href="http://www.ncua.gov/Phishing/phishing.htm">and even the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">NCUA</span></span>&#8217;s brand has been used in phishing attempts</a>. In fact, the <a href="http://www.antiphishing.org">Anti-Phishing Working Group</a> specifically cites a major increase in the phishing of a &#8220;number of small and local credit unions&#8221; as leading to a significant increase in all brands being phished in May.</p>
<p><strong>Fight Back</strong></p>
<p>Use both online and offline channels to educate your members about phishing:</p>
<ul>
<li>Devote an entire section of your website to scam alerts.</li>
<li>Print a phishing warning on the back of your statement envelopes.</li>
<li>Record a message about phishing on your telephone system. </li>
<li>Have each teller hand out a phishing awareness brochure with each deposit receipt. </li>
<li>Offer free member workshops on preventing identity theft (host a &#8220;shredding party&#8221; like <a href="http://www.uwcu.org/misc/earthday.asp">UW Credit Union</a> for your members to recycle unwanted confidential documents).</li>
</ul>
<p>Simply do whatever it takes to keep the message in front of your members, and don&#8217;t wait until your next quarterly newsletter to start.</p>
<p>Any other ideas?</p>
Wikipedia on the London attacks/2005/07/07/wikipedia-on-the-london-attacks/
Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/07/07/wikipedia-on-the-london-attacks<p>This morning I woke up to the news of the terrorist attacks on London&#8217;s public transportation system. After looking through a couple of news sites and watching some of the coverage on TV, I found that by far the best and most detailed source of information was the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_London_transport_explosions">Wikipedia news page</a>.
<p>How is this site able to be so much more detailed and thorough with its information (which has grown even more since I began typing this post)? The key lies in the fact that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a> is an information community, drawing its knowledge from all of the major news outlets and information sources, and collecting that knowledge in one location. It allows for constant updates and corrections of its information by anyone who knows anything. Its credibility safety net lies in the vast amount of people who use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>. If something is inaccurate or out of date, it is corrected by the rest of the community.</p>
<p>Another site that works the same way, but features images, is the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/bomb/pool/">Flickr photo group</a>, which allows anyone with relevant images to add to the collection. Many of the images are screenshots from television news coverage, including <span class="caps"><span class="caps">BBC</span></span> news.</p>
<p>It is impressive how much more accurately relevant information can be compiled by the community at large than by any individual news source.</p>
</p>
The DMV/2005/07/03/the-dmv/
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/07/03/the-dmv<p>Last Friday, my wife and I realized we&#8217;d kept our out-of-state driver&#8217;s licenses too long and made a trip to our local <span class="caps"><span class="caps">DMV</span></span>. We got there right before 11:00 AM and finally had our temporary licenses in hand four hours later.</p>
<p>Rather than the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">DMV</span></span> visit being a total inconvenience, it was a perfect opportunity for me to unplug and catch up on some reading. I had packed my journal (I keep business and personal notes in it when they come to me), the latest copy of <a href="http://www.creditunionmagazine.com">Credit Union Magazine</a>, and a brand new <a href="http://www.changethis.com/15.Tomato">ChangeThis manifesto</a> from <a href="http://www.tompeters.com">Tom Peters</a>.</p>
<p>After reading Peters, I dove into Credit Union Magazine, and came across Peggy Merrick Bakken&#8217;s &#8220;The 21st Century Leader&#8221; (on page 48), which calls good credit union leaders &#8220;people who share a set of skills that make them effective: collaborative leadership, team building, listening, the ability to convey vision, and an entrepeneurial spirit.&#8221; Peters&#8217; manifesto hits on each of these points, and while you may not subscribe to everything he has to say, reading these side-by-side is great food for thought.</p>
<p>And when it comes to honing those skills, that&#8217;s why we chose a blog, a collaborative tool, for <a href="http://www.opensourcecu.com">Open Source CU</a> rather than making this a once-a-week email newsletter, a static website, or a print publication. In Peters&#8217; words:</p>
<p>They say the Web is a &#8220;useful tool.&#8221;</p>
<p>I say the Web changes everything. Now.</p>
Verity/2005/06/28/verity/
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/06/28/verity<p>Name a CU that&#8217;s blogging. Give up? <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com">Here&#8217;s one.</a></p>
<p>Kudos to <a href="http://www.veritycu.com">Verity Credit Union</a>.</p>
<p>So, what are they saying? <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2005/06/just-like-animal-planet.html">Their most recent post</a> isn&#8217;t about HELOCs or CURIA - and at first glance it&#8217;s not relevant to anything &#8220;credit union&#8221; at all. It&#8217;s about a bird that crashed into the side of their building.</p>
<p>But when you think about it, the post is <span class="caps"><span class="caps">PERFECT</span></span> for connecting with their members.</p>
<p>It shows that they&#8217;re real people. It&#8217;s humorous and heartwarming. It&#8217;s <span class="caps"><span class="caps">REAL</span></span>. And if my membership were at Verity, the bird post would tell me more about who my management team really is than any profile page in the Annual Report ever could.</p>
<p><strong>It&#8217;s not all about birds, is it?</strong></p>
<p>Get deeper in the blog and you&#8217;ll find posts like <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2005/06/ours-is-good-tag-line.html">Ours Is a Good Tag Line</a>, which informs members just <span class="caps"><span class="caps">WHY</span></span> the credit union is named Verity and why their slogan fits.</p>
<p>My favorite, <a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2005/02/does-anyone-really-care.html">Does Anyone Really Care?</a>, addresses Wal-Mart&#8217;s apparent aspirations to get into the banking industry. Shari Storm, the author of the post, asks a question that many CUs would be scared stiff to ask their members. She asks, &#8220;Is Wal-Mart going to put us out of business?&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>So, how did they start the conversation?</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://veritycu.blogspot.com/2004/12/welcome-to-veritys-blog.html">Take a look at this</a>, and, by all means, let them know it&#8217;s working.</p>
Back from Vancouver/2005/06/22/back-from-vancouver/
Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/06/22/back-from-vancouver<p>Last night I returned from the <span class="caps"><span class="caps">CUES</span> </span>Annual Convention in Vancouver. Before the trip several people had told me that it was a beautiful place, and I must say that I wasn&#8217;t disappointed. It was a great place to visit and I hope to return soon and spend more time sight-seeing.</p>
<p>The convention was great. It was exciting to see so many credit union leaders with a strong desire to serve their members in new ways.</p>
<p>For those of you who were at either of the sessions or at the Canada West Council meeting, I&#8217;m glad that you&#8217;ve checked out the Open Source CU blog! As I mentioned during the sessions, we truly hope that this will become a valuable resource for you. If you ever want to learn more about any topic then please let us know and we&#8217;ll do our best to research it for you.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m excited about the future of this blog and of the industry. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope that together we can help shape the future of the credit union movement.</p>
<p>Also, if you have a local CU league or organization that you think might want to learn more about blogs and their role in strengthening the connection between your CU and your members, please contact me at <a href="maito:matt@trabian.com">matt@trabian.com</a>. (Unless you didn&#8217;t like the session, of course!)</p>
Priority Number One/2005/06/17/priority-number-one/
Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/06/17/priority-number-one<p>When Debbie Matz addressed the Mountain Regional Credit Union Roundtable this week, she told the nearly 100 CU officials gathered there, &#8220;When you adopt best practices and share them with others, you can overcome all of the concerns for the future of credit unions. You can reach new members of all ages and all ethnic groups, help small credit unions grow and thrive, uphold credit unions&#8217; pro-consumer reputation, and continue to earn your tax exemption by serving people of modest means.&#8221;</p>
<p>The overall theme was <a href="http://www.ncua.gov/news/press_releases/2005/NR05-0615-2.htm">increasing Membership Growth should be the <strong>number one priority</strong> for CUs</a> &#8211; and it ties in directly with what we&#8217;re trying to do with Open Source CU.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re all about using online and offline channels, as Matz emphasized, to share best practices. And while we&#8217;re at it, we&#8217;re going to discuss the pros and cons of blogging &#8211; both here and with your own members.</p>
<p>That being said, you&#8217;re never going to hear us preach that blogging with your members is the automatic answer to any and every problem. In fact, <a href="http://blogwrite.blogs.com/blogwrite/2005/04/another_view_no.html">blogging just isn&#8217;t for everybody.</a></p>
<p>Blogging is, however, one online channel (and possibly the only one) that&#8217;s better suited for credit unions than for banks. You can read Matt Dean&#8217;s &#8220;Starting the Conversation&#8221; post for more about that.</p>
<p>Take a look at this <a href="http://www.corprelations.wisc.edu/buswire/10842.html">recent study</a> that shows that CU execs, as a whole, view &#8220;Acquire New Members&#8221; as their third most important goal in online marketing, far behind &#8220;Sell Products or Services&#8221; and &#8220;Retain Existing Members&#8221;. Fewer than 10% listed it as their top priority.</p>
<p>Why do those priorities seem out of whack to us? Selling products isn&#8217;t bad in itself, <a href="http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6116.asp">but sales-speak in marketing has become a huge turn-off to consumers.</a></p>
<p>Perhaps that&#8217;s why the average CU member now is around 45 years old, well outside the prime lending age. That&#8217;s a big motivation for credit unions to communicate more effectively with &#8220;online&#8221; members, who, according to the study, &#8220;are more desirable members. They are more profitable, have higher loan and deposit balances, use more products, respond better to marketing and cost less to serve. In terms of demographics, they have more assets, higher income, better credit scores and are slightly younger than offline members.&#8221;</p>
<p>And they&#8217;re ready to <a href="http://www.cluetrain.com/book/markets.html">join the conversation</a>.</p>
Starting the Conversation/2005/06/13/starting-the-conversation/
Mon, 13 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000/2005/06/13/starting-the-conversation<p>When the credit union movement was in its infancy, movement leaders like <a href="http://www.creditunion.coop/history/filene.html">Edward Filene</a> were the CU equivalent of gospel evangelists, preaching the idea that common workers could band together to provide inexpensive credit while earning interest on their savings. Their message was well-received. Members didn&#8217;t just understand why they belonged to their credit union, they spread the message themselves, converting their friends, their co-workers and their families.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s changed? In today&#8217;s competitive banking environment in which consumer credit is easily available and most financial institutions recognize the need for personal attention and service, credit unions have lost much of their differentiating appeal &#8211; and <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050413/135628.html?.v=1">consumers are confused</a>.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, in each credit union I come across, both friendliness and genuine concern for members are certainly not in short supply. That&#8217;s evident in everyone from Board members to front-line tellers.</p>
<p>However, credit unions face a problem: <strong>an increasing number of members aren&#8217;t dropping by the local branch anymore.</strong> This comes as no surprise, really. The number of Internet users who bank online has nearly doubled over the last two years. Moreover, it&#8217;s the fastest-growing online activity, according to a <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/149/report_display.asp">Pew Internet &amp; American Life Project study</a>.</p>
<p>The good news (and this is <span class="caps"><span class="caps">REALLY</span></span> good news for credit unions) is that credit unions aren&#8217;t the only institutions that are struggling to create real connections with their markets.</p>
<p>Some of the largest corporations in the world, including <a href="http://nevon.typepad.com/nevon/2005/01/insights_on_gm_.html">GM</a>, <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan">Sun Microsystems</a>, and <a href="http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/05/scoop_can_blogg.php"><span class="caps">IBM</span></a>, are making dramatic changes to the way they communicate. Instead of relying solely on expensive advertisements and carefully crafted PR campaigns, these companies are realizing that the best way to reach their market is to speak to them directly. The Internet has provided a way for buyers to talk with sellers in a way that hasn&#8217;t been possible since the start of the Industrial Age and mass-production.</p>
<p>This is exactly what credit unions have been doing all along! Personal communication is by no means a new concept in the CU world. Credit union leaders just need to learn how to translate this to an online world. They&#8217;ll be able to communicate in a way that no bank ever can: openly, honestly, and sincerely.</p>
<p><strong>That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re starting Open Source <span class="caps">CU </span>- to help credit unions communicate the friendliness and sense of community which have always set them apart by taking advantage of the same Internet that is keeping their lobbies so quiet.</strong></p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t a speech. It&#8217;s a conversation. We look forward to hearing what you have to say!</p>